


Breath Of Life

by comicroute



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Grayson (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Robin: Son of Batman (Comics)
Genre: Ambiguous Morality, Angst, Character Development, Character Growth, Dick-centric, Family Dynamics, Gen, Moral Dilemmas, POV Damian, Symbolism, Time Travel, it won't end the way you're expecting it to, sibling dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 17:43:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13839810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comicroute/pseuds/comicroute
Summary: Dick and Damian get sent back to 2001, and as much as they try not to change any detail of the past, accidents can happen with even the greatest of intentions. Damian attempts to deal with the fallout while questioning how far morals can be stretched.





	Breath Of Life

**Author's Note:**

> I think I've been working on this since September. It's been very slow going. I've been working on it maybe 30 minutes total per week (for only most weeks), which amounts to all of the free time I've had since September. I could have probably been working on my other fics, and for that I have no excuse other than my mind has been stuck on this story for what feels like forever, and it takes me time that I didn't have to get back into the groove of multichaps.
> 
> As for when in comics this is taking place… it’s a mess. Let’s pretend that Agent Grayson and Damian’s death are the only New 52 things that happened and they got inserted somewhere in the Pre-52. The only thing that exists from Rebirth is Nightwing Vol 1. Dick is still 25. More importantly, the Court of Owls is an enigma to the Bats still and that whole kidnapping kids from the circus spiel didn’t happen (or, at least, no one knows about it). AKA all the Nightwing New 52 books no longer exist. It went from Bat!Dick to Agent Grayson.
> 
> I'm very, very passionate about this fic and I'm sooo pumped to show it off. A smarter person would have split this into multiple chapters, but that's not how I wrote it (this was supposed to be around 10k originally...) and the story is meant to flow without any lengthy breaks, so you all get 33K all at once.
> 
> Lastly, I love Damian Wayne and I put a frankly absurd amount of time characterizing him (I've been working on it for at least a year now). He's a very complex character and I hope you all like the way I portray him and Dick!
> 
> Don't forget to shoot me a message on Tumblr @ comicroute! Now, without further ado, enjoy the story!
> 
> (WARNING: Brief detailed depiction of a panic attack. It'll be obvious when it starts. There will be a line break after it ends, so feel free to skip to that)
> 
> NOTE: Ibn means 'Son'. I used Ibn as a reference to the Kingdom Come comic, but it means Son. It's not actually some authentic Arabic name, kay? Kay.

 

 

> _**I was looking for a breath of life** _
> 
> _**A little touch of heavenly light** _
> 
> _**But all the choirs in my head sang no** _

* * *

 

 

 

“Stop doing that,” Dick demands, but it’s with the edge of a smile.

“I’m doing a lot of things,” Damian quips back. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be a little more specific.”

They’re sitting on the edge of a rooftop, an unremarkably plain one that’s for once absent of the gothic style so signature to Gotham. It’s the roof of a renovated dental clinic, short and jarringly new in a boring way, unsuited to the theme of downtown. Dick has one arm propped on a folded knee, relaxed and open. Damian tries to mirror that, but it comes across awkward and stunted.

Dick rolls his eyes. “One of which is getting all pouty every time I’m within 10 feet of a remotely attractive civilian. It’s like patrolling with Bruce all over again.”

“We don’t need to waste unnecessary time loitering about as you unsuccessfully attempt to woo a woman into your bed--”

“It’s not unsuccessful if I’m not trying to get her in my bed,” Dick points out, his amused smile stretching into a grin.

“--and besides, the last thing a civilian needs is to be endangered because you showed favouritism.”

“I agree completely,” says Dick, catching Damian off guard. “That’s why I flirt with all of them equally.”

Damian pulls a face, wrinkling his nose in hopes that Dick might see it. He does, and he’s no less smug for it.

“Ah, kids,” he says, swinging his formerly propped knee over the rooftop so he can lean over the edge daringly and take a faceful of the wind angling up from the straight edge wall. The gusts have been dying down lately as a subtle announcement of summertime heat. “I remember when Tim was like that. And then he met Steph. Good times.”

Every time Damian looks out at Gotham like this, he can’t help but wonder who would want to put it on a postcard. When he does pass by tourist shops (of which there are becoming fewer and fewer) he finds that most postcards tend to be shot at angles far above and across the water, with the glow of the rising or setting sun to add some color to the otherwise grotesque, grey cement -- tints of red and yellow glinting off the spires to add some kind of life to their knife-sharp points. It’s either that, or the sight isn’t of Gotham at all, rather it’s of a specific building or, more commonly, the Trigate bridge stretching over copper water, with the water reaching the coast of Delaware in the corner offering a much more pleasant view of Metropolis. Other angles offer nothing but gothic landscape from another century interrupted jarringly by construction sites and structures butting boldly into the foreground -- uninvited reminders of the modern era.

When the buildings are slick with rain, they blend together. That’s when Damian likes to sit above it the most, because if he doesn’t, he might drown. The uncomfortable stench of factories and the atmosphere of the hopeless isn’t new to him, but the way buildings melt into one another in grayscale that only offers startling variety when examined closely makes an inhabitant feel like it’s the world. He has to sit on top of it and look at Metropolis and the ocean, Sommerset and Bristol and Mooney Bridge in the distance, to realise that there’s an entire world out there where the small lives scurrying around in Gotham don’t matter more than ants.

He suspects this is why all the vigilantes perch here, above the skyline. Or why Dick does, in any case. When Damian’s with his father, he always notices that the man tends to look down. The rooftops are nothing more, after all, than a point of leverage.

He’s never thought the city was pretty, and he’s never been the biggest fan of colors -- not like Dick is, in any case. But enclosed in a small space like this, where every view to the outside is obstructed by a building unless he works to rise above it, he can’t help but remember Nanda Parbat, or the Himalayas, or vast stretches of sand dunes, or the glinting of sunlight over the salt of the Dead Sea, or the Caucasus mountains surrounding fruit stands. He wasn’t raised in an urban landscape. He didn’t train here. The same concepts work, but the amount of times he’s executed something that worked perfectly in training but failed in an alley because he crashed into a dumpster or a random bag of garbage or a rusty ladder is ridiculous.

This isn’t his home. Sometimes, he even remembers that.

As if he can read his mind, Dick snorts. “She’s really ugly, isn’t she?”

“Very.”

But for some reason, it makes Dick grin. “Well, no one needs to fight for something already beautiful.” And with that, he falls backward off the roof. Damian rolls his eyes.

In the end, the night is somewhat successful. No fight is lost, but no fight is really a _fight._ Three moves and the perpetrator is down. Damian has already started pulling his punches just to make them last longer, and Dick is bored enough that he hasn’t made a comment about it even though Batman would most likely disapprove. They’ve already started taking turns instead of working together, and Damian offered to split up but Dick was adamant that that’s not the way they do things. It makes him feel inadequate. He demanded Dick to tell him why he doesn’t think he’s capable of fighting crime on his own.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said. “Bruce started letting Robin out alone with Tim. Jason and I? We stuck by his side like glue. If you go off on your own, your mic better be open the entire time and you better call someone else for back up or else you’re staying right here.”

The answer just made Damian want to leave that much more, but the question in the first place was for the sake of banter and keeping face. He doesn’t actually want to leave Dick’s side. Rules or not, he could patrol with anyone tonight and he chose Dick.

He knows the art of pride, and that’s the reason he won’t tell Dick why. But after everything so far -- Raptor not being the latest by strict definition, but most certainly unforgotten -- he’s…

Worried.

Because Dick hasn’t been home nearly enough. Falling off the grid, undercover with no allies and only secrets by his side, so much so that his own face wasn’t even his. He finished Spyral, only for it to be followed by the Court of Owls blackmailing him by _planting a bomb in Damian’s neck_ (he touches the base of his skull subconsciously, a phantom pain for a pain that was never there but he wishes was, so that maybe he could have known sooner) into doing their dirty work. He allied himself with a criminal who claimed to know who Dick truly is in his heart, a criminal like him, the relationship punctuated by an attempt on Bruce Wayne’s life, and all of that without Gordon’s own narration on the events. Damian hasn’t seen Dick apart from a brief visit to the arcade (and Dick walking into the Batcave saying something along the lines of, “Hey, don’t freak out, but secret assassins stuck an explosive into your body. Nothing new, right?”), and he’s set a precedent for not-so-subtle check-ups long before now, since before his own...untimely demise.

Dick has weaknesses, Damian realises now. And one of the biggest ones is isolating himself, because he’s never met a man more unsuited for being alone than Dick Grayson.

“Curry?” Dick asks, interrupting Damian’s train of thought. The man is on the fire escape, like Damian was for the last mugging, practicing a walking handstand on the railing. Damian is on the ground looking up at him from beside the prone form of an armed would-be convenience store thief. He straightens up when Damian raises his eyebrows at him. “What? It’s good patrol food. Tim wanted it all the time. You should try it.”

“I’ve had curry before,” Damian says, shooting a grapple to join him. “Probably much better than any place in Gotham could make it.”

“I meant try it while on patrol. Have you never taken a snack break?”

“Eating food in the middle of the night is bad for the metabolism and we’re on duty.”

Dick scoffs. “What, watching your weight now? You’ve got 20 more years to go before you need to do that.”

“You should start thinking about it, in that case.”

“There is no possible way my metabolism could slow down with a gig like _this,_ Baby Bat. Let me have my irregular eating habits and junk food. I befriended a speedster for most of my life. Words like ‘eating healthy’ and ‘diet’ aren’t in my vocabulary,” Dick says and leads the way to whatever hole-in-the-wall place he’s found that serves reputable Asian food.

They jest back and forth until they reach the small Asian shop, literally nestled in the corner of a block, obscured by the glaring lights of a CVS. It’s nice, talking about nothing but video games and making fun of movies or people in the hero community -- catching up on small talk, the realities of what they’ve really been doing and the things that have really been tearing them apart far away from here.

He wonders if this is what it’s like to feel normal. The waitress doesn’t even stare at them as they walk in. Then again, Damian isn’t sure she’s looked up in the entire time they’ve been there, and she might be starting to fall asleep.

He figures that it isn’t. After all, they barely open their menus before Dick straightens abruptly, in that way that can either mean curiosity or trouble, reminiscent of a dog. Damian frowns at the menu because only now is his stomach protesting the fact that he last ate a protein bar an hour ago and dinner is a distant memory, but he’ll never acknowledge it.

“Did you see that?”

“No,” Damian says, deadpan. His back is to the window. The only thing in front of him is Nightwing clutching an unlaminated menu that’s falling apart and an off-white wall that once made a sad attempt to be themed.

“It was some kind of light,” Dick says vaguely.

“I thought you would be used to streetlamps by now.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” says Dick, rolling his eyes. He gets up without needing to tell Damian to follow.

They leave the shop and enter the alley next to it. There, they find a man slapping a palm against the side of a gun that looks like it was bought at Toys R Us. It’s snow white and obviously plastic, or so made to look it, with a front piece attached that reminds Damian of a massive DSLR lens. “Work, dammit! I _knew_ this was junk!”

Honestly, Damian doesn’t know what to make of it. Clearly Dick doesn’t either, but he must be certain that this is where the vaguely described light came from because he isn’t moving past.

“What is this, a bad Dr. Light revamp?”

The man whirls around, and he’s an unspectacular sight. Rumpled suit and tie swung around the shoulder, completely soaked through, and hair plastered to his face. Water runs in rivulets down his chin. The rain hasn’t let up, but it’s falling off the Nightwing and Robin suits like water off glass by comparison.

“What are _you_ doing here?” the man exclaims, then looks down at his gun. “I didn’t even use it! It doesn’t even _work!”_

“Great,” Dick says with false cheer. “Mind dropping it anyway?”

He does, apparently, because he swings it around to point right at Dick, and Damian bristles. Faulty or not, they don’t know what the gun is or what it’s supposed to do. He’s about to sidestep out of the line of fire, but Dick is holding his ground and Damian doesn’t want to seem the coward. He also doesn’t want to be any further away from Dick than necessary when the man keeps recklessly putting himself in potential danger.

There’s a stand off. Dick is stiff. Damian can see the way his stance has suddenly shifted -- shoulders pulled back, elbows carefully held a small distance away from his side, weight evenly distributed in the balls of his feet. He doesn’t want to frighten the man, but he’s already readying himself to go through an easy aikido routine, the only thing usually necessary to take down a man like this.

The man doesn’t look crazy, however. Frustrated, maybe. Mostly disheartened. Under it lies anger, but it’s clearly directed elsewhere, and apparently he’s not too far gone to take it out on them. In the end, his grip around the… ‘gun’ loosens, and he shrugs. “Eh, whatever. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You’re armed,” Dick points out. “You have a license to carry?”

The man snorts. “What are you, a cop?”

Dick looks far too amused by that. Damian scowls.

“Look, I’ve had a long day, you know? This is just a bad camera and I wanted to test it out. I’ll just be on my way now.” He gesticulates wildly as he talks, and Damian tracks the movement of his ‘weapon’ through the air attentively. It’s stupid to ignore anything that could pose as a threat, especially when it’s unknown.

“You normally hold a camera like that?” Dick says, not even mentioning that the ‘camera’ has a trigger, and the only thing to photograph in an alley like this are rats. Damian stands his ground warily as Dick begins to slowly approach the man, who’s gradually beginning to look like he wants to make a break for it.

This is boring and Damian is finally remembering how long it’s been since he last had curry. He opens his mouth to snap at Dick to get on with it already, but that’s when he lunges forward and grasps onto the man’s forearm that’s holding the weapon. He’s ready to twist the arm back, dislodge the man’s grip, and he easily could have if it weren’t for the fact that the man had panicked enough to press the trigger before Dick had ever grabbed him, simply by the close proximity, and suddenly there’s a blinding light--

* * *

The feeling he gets when he wakes up is what Damian imagines a hangover is like.

What hits him first is how warm he is. The cave isn’t this warm, so they can’t be in medbay, and they  can’t still be in Gotham’s streets. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine, though, for how loud everything is. Damian tries to jump to his feet, but the world spins before he gets off the ground, and he staggers half-crouched sideways into a wall, blinking painfully at the harsh light assaulting his eyes. He slumps right back down.

“Dami?” Dick’s voice says from somewhere nearby, sounding absolutely wrecked. Damian doesn’t dare venture from his wall. He can feel vomit inching its way up his stomach and throat like acid and swallows instead of answering immediately; he shields his eyes (as if that’ll help; he doesn’t think he’s been in a more well-lit room in his life) as he tries to search Dick out. He finds him sprawled over a lumpy red and gold embroidered blanket on the floor starting barely a foot away, arm also crooked over his face.

The rest of the room’s details register slowly as Damian inches his hand away from his eyes. Beside Dick is a wrinkled set of blankets that Damian might have been resting on a few moments ago, and beside that is a bed stripped of its sheets. The floor is made up of uncovered wooden panels, and its relatively small. The blankets on the floor take up the entire free space between the bed and a door, and Dick’s close enough that Damian could nudge him with his toes. A dresser is so close to Dick’s head that removing a drawer might give him a concussion. There’s a hamper shoved in the corner, a mirror and another dresser somehow fit into the sliver of space between the head of the bed and the far wall. There’s a colorful costume that he finds familiar on the ground, and make up of assorted garish colors left in the open in front of the mirror. The door is only recognisable by its handle; the rest of it is obscured by the multitude of jackets all crammed up on the hook above.

Most importantly (most puzzlingly): They’re alone.

“Nightwing,” he says, wary of cameras or microphones that could be around since they’re still in their costumes, “I don’t recognise this place.” It’s pointless to ask Dick where they are. The man hasn’t even opened his eyes.

Speaking of eyes… He rapidly moves his hand up to finger at his mask, noting the still-tacky spirit gum. It’s not as if the mask could be easily removed, especially not without waking him up, but it’s a relief to know that no one’s tried.

It takes a few beats for Dick to respond. “Is there at least aspirin?”

“You could try the dresser,” Damian responds, and that finally encourages Dick to open his eyes. With a wince, he immediately reaches for his mask and fiddles with the settings. It must have been on a night enhancing mode -- not full night vision, instead a mode made for brightening the surrounding environment without needing adjustment. It’s a handy tool in bad weather. Damian is glad he didn’t use it this time.

“What the hell?” Dick mutters.

“My question exactly.”

But a few seconds pass and Dick’s only looking more alarmed as his eyes hurry to take in his surroundings. Damian expected that with the return of clarity, but it’s a different kind of alarm than Damian’s experiencing -- disbelief, bemusement, horror, shock. Not his own anxiety and discomfort.

“What--” Dick looks down at the blanket he’s now sitting on and absently runs his fingers along the embroidery. “Dami--”

Footsteps thump towards the door. Damian feels his heart rate ratchet up like a drum and he gets ready to leap to his feet (headache and nausea be damned) when the door is opened so softly that Damian’s bemusement stills his hand.

The face that pokes around the door almost makes him throw a batarang at it.

It’s a _clown._

“Oh, you’re awake!” the clown says cheerfully, and Damian looks on in horror as his plump mouth stretches into a grin that shows off all his white-painted dimples.

Damian almost finds it funny that this is the first time he’s ever seen an actual non-homicidal clown. But it’s not funny, because he’s not having fun. Why would anyone dress like a clown in _Gotham?_

“Are you out of your mind?” Damian demands, and the clown’s smile drops. “Why on earth would you--”

“Hi!” Dick interrupts, overeager. Damian scowls at him, taking the cut off for what it is. Dick rarely interrupts him without good reason. He wants to argue, but figures it might be more beneficial to demand an explanation later. “Uh, do you think you could tell us where we are, because we don’t really...remember…much of anything?”

Well, that’s a lie, but Damian isn’t sure how to describe the gun that apparently shoots off concussive light without seeming crazier than the clown. Dick probably doesn’t either.

“You’re at Haly’s Circus!” the clown grins, happy as ever to announce the name. A name that rings alarmingly clear in some distant memory, an oddity on its own because Damian doesn’t know of any circuses. “The happiest place in the world -- you’ll never find anywhere better than here!”

Well, save one. But...

“I’m Harry. Joey, our security guard, found you guys knocked out at the edge of the grounds and brought you up here thinking you were one of ours. He’s had a hard time keeping track of all the changing costumes.”

Something like an epiphany dawns on him as he fixes his stare on Dick, who’s avoiding his gaze and training it stubbornly on the clown.“Well, it’s nice to meet you, despite the circumstances. I’m Ron, and this is...Ibn. We’re…”

When Dick falters, Damian steps in. It’s ironic, since Damian’s improvization and undercover skills have been the laughing stock of the family for years already. “Cosplayers,” he says.

Harry looks down at the escrima sticks attached to Dick’s back, at the cape around Damian’s shoulders and the masks over their eyes. “Cosplayers?” he asks, tilting his head.

“We dress up as superheroes from comic books for fun. We just got back from a photoshoot. Sorry if we startled you,” elaborates Dick.

Any trace of caution Harry might have had before vanishes at the (somehow plausible) explanation. He laughs heartily. “Well, that explains it! No worries, costumes aren’t exactly unusual here. You know what, I think Jimmy might have some clothes that would fit you. As for you…” he turns to Damian and frowns. “We don’t really have many kids here, but Dickie’s pretty tall for his age, and I remember John bought bigger clothes for next year… I’ll see what I can find. You two just sit tight and I’ll be back in no time,” he says, turning to the door. But right before he leaves, he turns back to say, “You know, your costume looks an awful lot like theirs. I guess it’s a pretty nice design, inn’t?” And with those parting words, he vanishes out the door in a whirlwind of floppy clothes.

The moment the door closes, he turns to Dick. “ _Ibn_?” he exclaims.

“Sorry,” Dick apologises sheepishly. “It was the first thing I could think of.” A beat passes and Damian opens his mouth to answer, but Dick beats him to it by interrupting with: “How do you even know what cosplay is?”

“Beast Boy,” Damian says with a scowl, trying not to feel embarrassed.

The answer opens the door to a world of teasing and jokes, but Dick doesn’t take the bait, and that clues him in more than anything to Dick’s mood.

He thought the name of the circus could have been a coincidence before, but of course he should have known better. “This is it, isn’t it?” he asks, and Dick knows immediately what he’s talking about.

“What other circus bothers stopping in Gotham?” he quips back. He’s not wrong. “But… it doesn’t feel right. It’s _not_ right.” He frowns. “Harry stopped being a clown… years ago. And…”

Damian feels impatience build in him like a boiling pot of water. There’s something weird going on and he hates being left in the dark. “And?”

“And who’s Dickie?”

He stares at the non sequitur, wracks his brain for where it may have come from, and remembers briefly what Harry said before he left. Damian wasn’t paying much attention. “You think he was talking about you,” he says flatly, incredulously.

“I think we need to find out what year it is.”

It’s ridiculous, an absolutely absurd idea, but he spots an open calendar on the desk beside him and he reaches over and brings it closer---

June. That’s right, and Damian almost lets himself relax until he flips the calendar closed and catches the rest of the date.

“Well?” Dick prompts, but he’s positive that the man already knows what Damian’s looking at. He isn’t hiding his reaction.

“Where was Haly’s Circus in June of 2001?”

There’s a long, stretching silence. It’s a rhetorical question only for the sake that they both know the answer.

Dick lays back down again and covers his face with both hands. _“Shit,”_ he says emphatically, and the croak in it, which with anyone else would have Damian bolting for the hills, causes him to crawl closer. He ends up on his knees on the unoccupied, scratchy and worn yellow comforter beside Dick and just looks at him for a moment, trying to decide his next move.

It isn’t hard to make. Not anymore. He inches his way down onto the comforter and curls up close, awkwardly slings his arm over Dick’s chest and buries his face into his side.

Like this, he can hear that the breaths Dick takes are shakier than they appear.

When footsteps near the door become audible, Damian jumps away like he’s been burned and tries to quell the anxious feeling in his stomach telling him to do more. Dick sits up by the time the door opens again, but he looks older than the last time Harry appeared.

Harry must know it, because he immediately looks concerned. There are some clothes thrown over his forearm and he walks in to start setting them on the stripped bed. “I hope you don’t mind me askin’, but do you know how you ended up blacked out on the campgrounds?”

The go-to answer is a wild, drunken night, and it would work if Damian weren’t obviously a minor. He goes stiff against his better judgement, hoping his discomfort isn’t noticeable.

“No idea,” Dick says, and Damian fights the urge to hit him. He’s not supposed to actually tell the truth. “Last thing I remember, we were walking down the street… I’ve never even heard of this place before, and I don’t remember being anywhere near any campgrounds…”

Harry’s concern mounts, and he turns to crouch beside Dick, looking into the state of his eyes. “Were you inside or outside of Gotham limits?”

Dick’s eyes widen almost comically. He jerks his head up fast, then grimaces at the sharp pain. “Gotham?” he exclaims. “How did we get to Gotham? We were in New York!”

Damian cringes at the cheap acting. He cringes more at the fact that Harry falls for it. No one has any sense of dignity these days.

What follows is a lot of loud, surprised exclamations and confusion as he and Dick are rushed into changing their clothes and then shuffled out to meet the rest of the circus. They talk to the security guard, they talk to a man who looks like he’s on steroids carrying a steel support rod, they talk to acrobats and bearded ladies and fire breathers before they’re finally, somehow, eventually sitting down at a long plastic table that reminds him uncomfortably of the lunch tables at school. Damian, who normally prides himself on being situationally aware, is left sitting there awkwardly as Dick takes it upon himself to give him his food that he, at some point, managed to both find and dish up.

Damian would say that the man’s already learning his way around, but he knows better than that. He knows Dick Grayson, and he knows when the man is truly comfortable and when he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s a fish out of water.

They sit there silently, a small point of calm in the center of a cacophonic babble of chattering people sliding around each other like worms in a bucket. They’re not alone at the table. Far from it. Harry sits across from them with a large woman, long braided hair wrapped in a bun on top of her head, who introduces herself as Wilhelm. Beside her is Amelia Kovalchik, a fire breather judging by her costume, and pushed snugly against Damian’s right hip is Samson “Mister Muscles” Lanski, the Strongman. Damian keeps trying to shift away from him, consequently moving close enough to Dick that he would probably end up on top of him if he tried harder.

Damian doesn’t know how to feel about that, because he doesn’t appreciate all the touching but he isn’t totally sure where Dick’s thoughts are. He’s a man grounded by physical comfort, but there’s so much touching and contact to be had at the moment that he probably doesn’t need any from Damian. Still, Dick allows the contact to continue, if only to provide Damian some shelter away from strangers.

“Shouldn’t you be going to the cops with this?” Samson says, and Damian recalls Dick mentioning something about that earlier. A conversation about taking it easy and some bullshit about a corrupt police force (or is it?).

“Hey now, no need to kick folks out when they just got here,” Wilhelm protests, offering a yellow toothed grin at Damian, who resists the urge to recoil.

“I appreciate all of this, really,” Dick says, quietly, so unlike him, and Damian shifts uncomfortably in his seat. It’s too hot in here.

“Fellow performers gotta look out for each other,” Harry says, and Dick protests:

“We’re not really--”

Harry waves him off.

“The clothes fit okay, Ibn?” the clown asks instead, looking at Damian, and it takes him a moment longer than it usually would to realize he’s talking to him. The shirt rides up when he lifts his arms and it’s a little tight around the armpits. There’s an ugly scar that cuts along his right hip so he’s taken to pulling his sweatpants up as far as they’ll go and drawing the drawstring tight. Doing that makes it a little short at the bottom and just slightly tight on the inside of his thighs.

“Fine,” he says curtly, focusing down on his green beans.

“Dickie’s a bit smaller than you,” Harry says apologetically. “Long legs, though. That boy can outrun the best of us, and god knows he does it often enough, so I was hoping that’d help them fit."

Damian just nods. Harry takes the dismissal for what it is. “So, you guys ever been to the circus?” he asks Dick.

“I have,” Dick responds. “Not Ibn, though.”

At the news, Amelia perks up, ducking her head out from the yogurt she was shovelling into her mouth. “Opening night is just a day away! Come on, you have to stay until then. Giving you a free show is the least we can do.”

“Least you can do in exchange for what?” Dick answers, obviously bemused. “All we’ve done is put you through trouble--”

 _“Shhh,”_ Wilhelm insists, making an abrupt cut-throat gesture. “You’d do best not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Free stuff is always the best stuff.”

Damian finishes first, but sits there and tries to pretend that he hasn’t. Normally he’d have no problem excusing himself from the table, and he’s about to do just that, but the thought of not having Dick in his sights twists his stomach into knots.

But eventually, although it takes quite a while, Amelia coaxes Dick into talking about the force, and just like that the man is settling into the role of a storyteller. He unconsciously shifts away from Damian to give his elbows more room for wild gestures, and the boy takes that as his cue to leave.

Dick stiffens when the spot beside him fills with empty air, and a few curious glances around the table land on him, but Dick doesn’t stop talking for long enough to ask where he’s going. Dick must think he’ll be back soon, and Damian doesn’t want to interrupt him. He definitely doesn’t want to get close enough to Samson to whisper in his ear about it, so he leaves without saying goodbye.

Lunch isn’t entirely a circus wide event, so when Damian ducks out from under the gigantic barebones shelter constructed for meal time, he finds that the rest of the campground isn’t deserted. The workers testing supports go about shouting and sprinting about vigorously, and people on ladders proceed with hooking the tent canvas over its skeleton. He passes them by, searching for somewhere more deserted -- he considers the trailer they woke up in, but discards the idea. He will later. He needs some semblance of privacy, but he also needs some room to breathe, and the trailer’s so cluttered he doesn’t know how anyone could possibly live there.

He sets out in a direction that seems headed out of the grounds and into Gotham. He won’t make it all the way into the city, of course -- he isn’t stupid. This Gotham isn’t the one he knows and he has no money, what would be the point? It’s hard to, but he pushes any thoughts of his father to the very back of his mind. Instead, he makes it to the fence and squints out over the distant murky waters of the harbor he can see from here, then turns and starts walking alongside it, letting his fingers ghost over the steel ridges.

“Hey! Are you supposed to be here?”

Damian turns his head at the loud, childish voice and finds the owner of it ten or so yards from him, sitting in a patch of scuffed loose dirt.

“Yes,” Damian yells back, and the child waves at him to come closer.

“You’re one of the guys Joey found outside!” the child pipes excitedly when Damian obeys, expressive brows high on his forehead, unruly black hair laden with humidity curling around his ears. His cheeks are rosy from the heat that comes with a Gothamite June day and it brings out the startling sky blue of his eyes. He’s wearing a circus uniform reminiscent to Amelia’s but not nearly as flashy or with as many excessive accessories as hers -- a form fitting navy unitard with a lighter blue accent that cuts from his shoulders to his chest in a crisp V.

If it weren’t the face that gave him away, it would definitely be the costume.

“Is it that obvious?” Damian asks, finding it hard to believe that everyone really knows _everyone_ on the campgrounds. There have to be hundreds of people all occupying the area. The miniature version of Dick Grayson smiles conspiratorially and shakes his head.

“No, but you’re wearing my clothes.”

“Oh.”

“I’m Dickie,” he says, standing up and offering his hand. “You’re… Ron, right?”

“Ibn.”

“Right! Ron is your… dad? Brother?”

“Brother.”

“Cool,” Dickie says, grinning. “I wish I had a brother.”

Damian wants to say something along the lines of it not being the greatest, thinking about Dick’s history with Jason in particular. But the words die in his throat. Instead he says: “You still can. I mean, Ron isn’t really my brother. Not by blood.”

“Oh. Are you just best friends?” the boy asks as he crouches back down to even the layer of dirt. One side of the patch is higher than the other, dirt piled on top of itself.

“It’s...complicated,” he answers, trying to settle for the shortest response. No need to get into something that ‘Dickie’ will eventually find out for himself.

There’s an itch in his gut, something that tells him he shouldn’t be here, that he needs to leave immediately. But there’s also something poetic about being here after getting dismissed by Dick earlier, and definitely something captivating about the knowledge that technically, Dickie and Dick are both one person, or will be one day. He can see it, and he doesn’t know if that thrills or scares him.

On one hand, it reminds him that no matter how many changes Dick goes through, if he’s kept some of the same traits for this long -- the same crinkle of the eyes, the same warm humor and friendly welcome -- then he can’t truly ever change past the point of recognition, right? That no matter what happens, he’ll always be the sort of man Damian can rely on (and won’t become like Bruce, who Damian hears stories about from the past and wonders how those stories can be talking about the same man). But also, it terrifies him. Because if parts of Dick have stayed with him since his childhood, what does that mean for Damian? Twenty years from now, will he ever change, or will he remain the same despite his greatest efforts?

“Well, then I guess it doesn’t matter. If you say he’s your brother then he’s your brother,” Dickie says with easy acceptance. He gets up off the ground and brushes off his thighs.

“What’re you doing?” Damian finally decides to ask. He eyes the patches of dirt on Dickie’s knees and wonders if Mary is the type of mother to get angry at that.

“Just burying some stuff. I do it every place we stop. It’s just some things I’m usually too old for or even gift shop stuff, but I like digging it up when we come back around,” he explains. Damian doesn’t have anything to say in response, but Dickie swiftly changes the subject anyway. “Do you play soccer?”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna play? I’ve got a ball in Stella’s stall. I had to hide it or else Ray would’a stole it and not given it back.”

“Only if you like losing.”

And Damian didn’t realise what was missing before he said that -- the spark of mischief and challenge and competition that’s always just a little bit present in Dick’s eyes, in his face, no matter what he’s doing or saying. But at the challenge in Damian’s voice, Dickie’s face opens up like a pine cone in warm weather and he can see all the tiny things, the quirks that are a mirrored reflection of the older man he knows so well.

_“Bring it.”_

 

* * *

 

They spend the afternoon playing soccer, and they only stop when Dickie’s mother -- a woman more beautiful than the posters and bleached out photos in Dick’s room display, with long lean limbs and thick mouse brown hair that can only attempt to be kept back in a bun -- comes out to beckon Dickie inside for rehearsal.

The sun hasn’t begun to set yet, the days finally lengthening into summer hours, but Damian still knows it’s getting late. He makes his way to the trailer room that Harry’s lending them. He barely opens the door when he gets the urge to shut it and keep walking.

Dick is sitting on the bed still stripped of its sheets, clutching the edge of the mattress with a white knuckled grip. He looks at Damian with a tense jaw, and Damian feels a wave of… dread, anticipation, disappointment, shame wash over him, even though he doesn’t know what he’s feeling any of this for.

He says nothing, just stands there and waits for Dick to speak, despite feeling like the silence has a meaty fist gripping his throat and his chest.

“What were you doing?” Dick asks -- no, demands.

It makes Damian bristle. He tries not to. He’s been getting better about it, and he knows that Dick only ever gets angry for other reasons, for hidden reasons and never because he doesn’t want to look at Damian, never because he _hates_ him, and yet…

He says nothing because it’s a rhetorical question. Of course it is. Why are half the questions that his new family in Gotham asks unnecessary? Questions asked in the League were always meant to be answered.

“Do you have _any idea_ the amount of danger--”

“From a nine year old? I’ve stood toe to toe with Deathstroke and you expect me to be afraid of--”

“No! God, no, you shouldn’t be afraid of what someone else is going to do, you should be afraid of what _you’re_ going to do.” And maybe Dick didn’t mean it that way, but the statement hits something soft in his chest and he doesn’t know if he wants to escape or scream. “Anything, any tiny little thing that you do or say or space you take up could change the future in ways you would never think of! Don’t you understand that? It’s _dangerous_ because you can never predict how you’ll affect others, affect _me._ You need to stay away from him, okay? Stay away from him and from my…” There’s a lengthy, choked pause.

“Why didn’t you come get me sooner if you were so worried I would mess up your whole life?” Damian asks, jaw clenched and shoulders stiff.

Dick only bows to put his head in his hands, and that makes Damian angry, makes him dig his fingernails into his palms and fight to keep his breath steady. It’s worse because he knows Dick is right.

But right then, before either of them can say anything more, there’s a knock on the door. Damian doesn’t move to get it at first, and Dick makes no indication that he wants him to, but when he hears Dickie’s voice ask, “Hey, is Ibn in there?” and sees Dick jolt like he’s been shocked, a vindictive part of him turns around and opens it.

It’s just by a crack, just enough for him to poke his neck out. He isn’t stupid.

Dickie grins up at him. He’s shorter than Damian only by a little bit, not yet grown into his gangly teens. Dick as an adult is all proportional -- right now, Dickie’s legs are a little too long compared to his torso, a little too thin. But his torso will fill out, and so will his legs and arms, and he’ll become maybe the best acrobat the world has ever seen.

It’s difficult to picture, seeing him like this.

“My mom said that you could come watch us practice, if you want.”

Damian resists the urge to look back at Dick. “Sure,” he says, and watches as Dickie runs off to make it before he’s late. He still refuses to look Dick in the eyes as he walks back inside and grabs his jacket, but by the time he tries to make it out the door again, it’s blocked.

“What will it take to get you to leave him alone?” Dick says, anger leached from his voice, suddenly more tired and haggard than ever.

“There aren’t many other kids his age around, is there?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It does. It means he won’t leave me alone even if I wanted him to.” It’s weird, referring to Dick in third person, even if technically Dickie _is_ a different person.

“That’s not an excuse Dami, you have no idea what you’re messing with here. Please, _please_ stay away from them until we can figure out a way to get back.”

“And if we don’t?”

Dick’s eyes narrow. “We will. The moment B realizes we’re missing, which has definitely happened by now, he’ll have the entire Justice League looking for us, and do you really think there’s any shortage of time travellers there?”

“Batman never asks for help.”

“He does when the _life of his son_ is on the line. Happened once, he wouldn’t let it happen again.” They both know it’s a lie, but they both let it slide.

Damian stares at him evenly, at the desperation thinly veiled, and says, “Sons.”

Dick chews on his lip, surprise barely masked, sadness even less so, and says nothing.

“You should see them,” Damian says, and he’s not sure where that came from. It’s probably the worst idea he can think of, but the question of _sons_ and _fathers_ suddenly makes Damian antsy with the idea of a missed opportunity. “You need to talk to them.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. You _have_ to. You’ll never--”

“I _can’t._ So many things could go wrong. It’s not worth the risk.”

“So you’ll sit here and coware in fear because you can’t face the dead?”

“Facing the living is worse than facing the dead,” Dick announces, certainty laced in every word.

“Be sure to let Deadman know. I’m certain he’ll appreciate it,” Damian says, before shouldering his way to the door. Dick doesn’t stop him.

Practice for the acrobats is under the big top, on the same stage that the shows happen, because it’s the only place with trapeze bars. Already, the construction for the top is almost entirely finished, and Damian looks around in awe at all that was added in the few hours since he’d seen it last. The stage and the last few rows of the audience’s chairs are there, while the food court is in the process of plugging in wires and stocking up on ingredients. Damian makes his way to the foot of the stage and decides to stand, leaning up against the wood and craning his neck to watch the Flying Graysons in flight for the first time.

And instantly, he can see it. He can see the original Robin in every graceful movement of his mother -- mostly his mother, and he can see why, when she stands below the trapezes and brushes her hands up against Dick’s sides and repositions his arms and legs, all instruction and assured comfort. His father is no less graceful, but already set up as the role of the heavy lifter, the building block of the acts, the catcher. Dick, not yet of the same size and nowhere near the same usefulness in a role like that, gets to pull the lightest tricks and twirls.

Without instruction later in life, he never switched roles, designed as a child to be the lightest flyer of the group, and forever that child beneath all of his moves.

Of course he’s changed in some things. The twirls aren’t nearly the same. He’s heard, to this day, tips from Bruce -- tuck in the flip faster, twirl less, _don’t leave your stomach open for the sake of a show._ All the tools of a showman crushed and condensed into a weapon.

They finish their routine and Dickie comes barrelling for him like an excited puppy. His parents are far behind, taking their time to roll off the safety net that they allowed to catch them (on purpose. They didn’t fall. Falling implies something unintentional. It wasn’t so much falling at it was… letting go).

“Did you see the last flip I did?” Dickie asks enthusiastically, eyes alight with a fire that Damian hasn’t seen for… a while. “A _quadruple_ flip! Did you see that? Did you count the turns? _Four times_ before mom caught me. Four times! Oh my god,” he smoothly turns around to where his mother is still trying to catch up and shouts, “Did you see that? Did you _count_ it? I did it! Oh my god!”

Mary finally catches up. She reaches from behind and grabs Dickie’s face to tilt it back so she can land a kiss on his forehead. “My little Robin,” she says with a smile.

“I think this deserves ice cream,” John Grayson states, coming up behind Mary. He wraps an arm around his wife’s waist as she shakes her head.

“Not at five pm it doesn’t.”

“It does if a place is open.”

“Nope.”

John looks at her imploringly. “Please?”

“You’re not my child.”

“But I am!” Dickie says, hopping right up next to her and grabbing onto her arm. “Please?”

 _“Please?”_ John says again.

She sighs and looks at Damian. She leaves time for a dramatic pause. “Do you like ice cream?”

Dickie and John cheer as Mary tries not to smile.

In hindsight, maybe Damian should have told Dick where he was going. But it was a hard fact to remember when, technically, ‘Dick’ was right beside him, trying desperately to lick dripping ice cream off the sides of his waffle cone. Somehow they found an ice cream shop just five minutes before it closed, and despite making the employees none-too-pleased, they came out right on the dot.

“So, Ibn, I’ve heard a lot about you lately,” Mary begins as they sit at the bus stop, waiting for a city bus to take them back to campgrounds. A city bus that’s already 15 minutes late, but then again, Gotham isn’t known for its reliable public transportation. “It’s nice to finally put a face to your name.”

Damian ducks his head awkwardly. He’ll admit that he’s never been the… smoothest when it comes to first meetings with strangers, but there’s this desperate part of him that needs him to get it right this time if no other time, because this is the walking memory of a woman, this scene forever to be remembered by his...

His what? His mentor? Big brother? Father figure? Partner? Leader? Who?

Besides, at this point she feels like no stranger. He’s never heard about her, not really, only mentioned in snippets from a man warring to both forget them completely and to never, _ever_ let them go, but the significance of her bears on him like a leaden weight. Familiar by association.

“It’s nice to meet you too,” he chokes out, certainly meaning it but not used to thinking so hard on a sentence so simple. “I’m… sorry to have intruded on your company like this, I won’t be here long--”

“Don’t be silly,” Mary says, and she’s smiling a million watt smile that thumps _hard_ in Damian’s chest and gut because it looks _exactly_ like Dick’s, do others see so much of Talia in him as well? Maybe it’s just as well that Dick’s hiding away, because no one who looked at him would ever be fooled. “I heard that you and your brother came a long way.”

“Not too long,” Damian tries to say nonchalantly.

“Well, it’ll be worth it once you see these two in the air,” John says with firm conviction.

“I don’t doubt it.”

And just like that, Damian’s successfully ended a conversation just because he doesn’t know how to carry one, and he’s so tense with anxiety that he almost doesn’t hear it when Dickie speaks up.

“Where’re you from?”

Damian stares at him because that’s probably the most complicated question he could be asked at the moment.

Dickie misinterprets his look and fidgets in response. “I just mean, you kind of have an accent and it reminds me of the crewmen we got in Jordan is all.”

“You went to Jordan?”

Dickie beams. “Yup! And Romania, and Hungry--”

“Hungary,” John interjects.

“--and Austria, and Switzerland, which was way too cold, and Georgia, and Russia, but they didn’t like us very much, mom says Russians are really competitive, but we found a Bugarian fortune teller there and--”

“Bulgarian.”

“--then we went to India, and India-sia?”

“Indonesia.”

When Dickie pauses for a breath, Damian says: “I’m from Tibet.”

“I hope you don’t mind if I ask, but you don’t look Tibetan,” Mary says kindly.

“I’m not. I’m… Arabic.” He’s about to add on a possibility of Persian, and maybe some Chinese ancestry is probably true, and he _is_ half white from his father’s side, but at this point he doesn’t care enough. Racial inheritance has always been trivial to him in light of more... pressing issues of identity. “But I grew up in Tibet. It’s complicated.”

“I know right?” Dickie interjects immediately. “I mean, people ask where _I’m_ from like, all the time, but I’m from the circus, who cares where else? We’ve been all over the world! I grew up everywhere! How do I answer that? I don’t _know_ what country I’m from -- I’m from no country, just the circus. Countries are stupid.”

“Don’t you mean nationalities are stupid?” Damian asks.

“No. Countries are stupid. Everyone should be part of one big country. Then we wouldn’t have to get stopped for like five hours every time we wanted to go somewhere.”

“Five hours?”

John laughs. “We have a _lot_ of people to get over borders. And apparently a lot of potential weapons.”

“Yes, we’re very well-disguised evildoers,” Mary says with a roll of her eyes.

Damian tries not to give away the fact that he’s never had to bother with lengthy passport checks. Money is a very convenient thing.

They get on the bus and ride back to the campgrounds. The whole thing takes only about ten minutes, and when they get back the air has only just begun to get chilly. Damian lends Dickie his jacket. The boy is still only in a unitard, after all.

It’s when they’re walking back towards the trailers that Damian sees him. Sees them, actually. Dick is leaning up against the wall between their door and the door of their neighbor, a man in a remarkably familiar suit. Damian doesn’t dwell on the image too long at first, saying his farewells to the Graysons as quickly as possible before Dick notices them. He watches as they part in a different direction, behind the trailer that Damian and Dick are staying in, before he approaches the men.

Dick doesn’t smile at him, just gives him a curt nod. Damian tries not to take the coldness to heart. He always gets like this when he’s stressed. But Damian also isn’t naive enough to think it has nothing to do with his decisions from earlier. He turns to greet the newcomer and stops dead in his tracks.

Well, he stops in his tracks, anyway. ‘Stopping dead’ seems a little too on the nose right now.

He doesn’t recognise the face, that’s for sure. Shiny black hat hair above thick black eyebrows and light brown eyes. The man offers him a friendly, crooked toothed smile and says something that Damian doesn’t hear, too distracted by the symbol on his chest.

_Deadman._

When Damian told Dick to tell Deadman what he said earlier, he didn’t mean it literally.

The red vampire collar is floppier than he thought, the costume flashier, the red shinier, the man himself shorter. But of course Damian would recognise it. He’s seen the sketch that Zatanna drew for the Batcomputer’s files a dozen times, and the amount of time Deadman’s spent in Nanda Parbat allowed Damian to become used to his presence (and by presence, he means become used to the ninja around him spontaneously talking with an old-fashioned Brooklyn accent and telling crude jokes). But he’s never even seen so much as a drawing of him that didn’t have the bald head and sunken eyes signature to a… well, dead man.

He knows Deadman, otherwise known as Boston Brand, was once an acrobat. He didn’t quite make the connection to him being an acrobat _in Haly’s Circus,_ though.

What are the chances?

Damian stays as polite as he has the patience for, the extent of which is a few head nods and “Hello”, but escapes into their room the moment he has the chance. Dick follows soon thereafter.

They spend the first few minutes silently getting ready for bed, which is awkward on its own because the sun is only just setting. They haven’t gone to bed this early for as long as they can remember, and they certainly aren’t starting now. In the end, all they do is set the sheets and blankets on the ground in a more organized fashion and change into more comfortable clothes. Dick grabs a book off the dresser that Damian didn’t spot before, but he knows for a fact that Dick doesn’t like reading books as large as this one is, so it just makes the whole thing worse.

“So,” Damian begins, and he’s already regretting his words as he says them but there’s a bitter part of him that’s making them come out anyway. “Talking to your parents is forbidden, but Brand isn’t.”

“Boston’s different,” Dick quips immediately, not looking up from his book.

  
“Oh, so changing his past isn’t as big of a deal? Because what, he’s not as important?”

Dick takes in an inaudible deep breath. Damian recognizes it as one of the calming exercises that Batman taught everyone.

“You have terrible excuses.”

He doesn’t rise to the bait. Of course he doesn’t. He wouldn’t have lasted so long as the Batman to Damian’s Robin if he were easily baited.

“You’re just scared. The first Robin, the second Batman, founder of the Teen Titans and leader of many -- a man respected and admired by every conceivable superhero team on the entire globe and then some, is nothing but a coward when faced with his own past.” And doesn’t that ring just so close to home? He ignores the nausea.

“Stop,” Dick says, the word clipped and cold, but it’s a reaction, it’s something different from the coldness he’s suddenly exuding, the concealed frustration and anger and _grief_ on lockdown. Damian can’t help but press.

“A coward, a fraud, a scared _little boy,_ who hasn’t changed in the least from who he was _sixteen years ago--”_

“Yeah, I am,” Dick interrupts, louder than before, not a shout but just as effective as one. “Is that what you want me to say? Yeah, I’m a coward, because I swear to God -- I swear to you, Dami, if I go out there and see them just once… If I get to talk to them one more time, and then Booster Gold or Flash or Batman or whoever shows up -- I don’t know if I’ll go with them. If you let me hug them one more time, I don’t think I’ll leave.”

The book gets thrown onto the stripped bed. Dick leans against the wooden frame and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Damian stares, feeling for all the world like ice water replaced the blood in veins.

There’s something in his throat, something that wants to tell Dick not to leave him, _don’t ever leave._ He wouldn’t know what to do without him.

He didn’t know what to do without him, when he was in the… when he thought…

_Please don’t do it again._

“Don’t be stupid. Of course you will.”

“No, I probably won’t,” Dick says with a steady voice that doesn’t match his unsteady hands. “So just… stop. For once. Please.”

Damian slams the door on his way out.

He finds Dickie with an elephant. Wilhelm is guiding it out of its stall, Dickie proudly sitting on top. He waves when he spots Damian walking down the stairs from the trailer’s attached walking platform. When he gets close enough, Dickie asks, “Wanna help me wash Zitka?”

“It’s going to get cold,” Wilhelm tries saying, to no avail. “I still think you should do this in the morning.”

“But I can’t sleep anyway and there’s nothing else to do,” Dickie says, sliding down Zitka’s side so Wilhelm can catch him.

“How about you clean her stall instead?” Dickie looks at her, unimpressed. She sighs. “Or you can unnecessarily spray water all over her, soak yourself in the process, and catch a cold right before opening night?"

“Okay!” he chirps, and bounds away to find the water hose.

“No soap!” she yells after him. She shakes her head at Damian. “The second you two get cold, go back inside and change, okay?” He nods and she walks away, satisfied.

He’s still looking after her when he gets sprayed in the back with an icy blast of water. He whirls around with a squawk that he’ll deny to his dying breath, only to see Dickie standing there with the least apologetic grin he’s possibly ever seen. “Whoops.”  
  
Damian chases him around the elephant at first before he decides to run underneath her in order to tackle Dickie to the grass. “Dude!” Dickie exclaims, eyes wide, staring up at Damian from where he lays with his back flat on the ground. “You never go under the elephant!”  
  
“Why not?” Damian asks, wrestling the hose from his grip and spraying it in his face. He yelps and tries to turn away from the icy spray, managing to get out:  
  
“Because she’s an elephant!”  
  
“Wow, that’s so very helpful.”  
  
“I’m serious!” he exclaims, grabbing the hose and turning it away from both of them so Damian can’t turn it against him again. He looks troubled. “What if she sat down?”  
  
Damian almost scoffs, until he realises that Dickie is being entirely serious. “Whoops?”  
  
Dickie sprays him directly in the mouth for that. Damian backs away, choking on unwelcome water, and is about to strategically grab a bucket when they suddenly hear a shout from the nearest trailer to the animals, only some ten yards away, unconnected to the rest of the sleeping quarters. Dickie motions for him to shush as they watch the commotion.  
  
“You’ll regret this!” shouts a man in a rumpled suit as he stumbles out the garishly painted trailer door. He would almost look important, if it weren’t for his disheveled combover. “Last chance, Haly! Insurance is assurance! _Accidents_ can happen at any time.”

  
But there’s no answer from the shut door, and they watch as the man finally turns around and straightens his suit, walking off the platform with as much dignity as can be mustered from someone who was literally thrown out on their ass.  
  
“I’ve never seen him before,” Dickie comments thoughtfully, but stiffens when he realises that the man is headed directly for them. It quickly becomes apparent that his angle is off, though, and he’s only passing by, but he shoots them a dirty glance at the way they’re just standing and watching him and snaps a “What’re you lookin’ at?” before he’s gone, making Dickie jump.  
  
Dickie frowns at the trailer. “Do you think Mr. Haly’s okay?” he asks.

“Probably,” Damian says, but there’s an ugly, acidic tang in the back of his throat that tells a different story.

* * *

 

“You’re not going to see them.”

It isn’t a question. Damian doesn’t ask questions he already knows the answers to. Dick hardly looks at him, instead busying himself with straightening the blankets -- again. They both woke up late but there’s still some time left before the opening show, and Dick seems determined to spend it fretting. He looks like a paranoid 50’s housewife trying to tidy up the house before guests come over for dinner.

He only knows that reference because of all the I Love Lucy Stephanie watches, and he really wishes he didn’t.

“No,” Dick says, quietly. He finally glances at Damian then. He’s calmer than expected, but there’s a hidden shakiness in his posture that speaks contrary to appearances. “But I’m happy that you get to.”

“I’m sure it won’t be as impressive as what you can do now,” Damian points out, but Dick shakes his head.

“It figures you would only compliment me when you’re insulting the rest of my family.” The attempt at levity falls flat.

“I didn’t mean--” Damian protests, but he drops it when he realizes Dick isn’t listening. The man has stopped in his tracks, fingering the flashy blue circus costume formerly draped over the end of the bed frame with distant eyes.

Damian doesn’t say anything for a long moment, letting the oppressive silence engulf them, but eventually he breaks it by saying: “I should give that back to your father.”

Immediately as he says it, he regrets it. Dick winces, but he can’t tell if it’s because he dragged the man so abruptly out of his head or because he mentioned his father -- the one who should be dead.

Dick walks over and hands the uniform to him, but it takes a moment longer for him to uncurl his fingers from their death grip on it. “Yeah. You should going or else you’ll miss the show.”

“Come with me,” Damian demands.

“No,” says Dick, turning away to sit against the side of the bed, his arms draped over his bent knees.

“Nothing’s going to happen tonight,” insists Damian, and there’s no way Dick could get any tenser than he is now. “You’re wasting an opportunity you may never get again.”

“I wasn’t supposed to have it in the first place.”

“But you _do._ You’ve never been one to throw something like this to waste!”

“ _Drop it,_ Damian.”

The use of his full first name _almost_ stops him in his tracks.

“You’ve forgotten it, haven’t you?” There’s no response. “You’ve forgotten the way they look. I’ve lived less time than it’s been since you last saw them in the air. One day, you’re going to forget everything about them, and then you won’t even have a memory, as safe as you insist a memory is. You won’t have _anything._ All that will be left to grieve is something you know you once had only in theory. And this will all become memory again. But how sad, how _pathetic_ will it be, to know that I remember your life better than you do?”

At Dick’s continued silence, Damian folds the fabric in his hands, just to give himself something to do. When he’s done, he holds the small square close to his chest and walks out the door without another word. The pattern of walking out after Dick lets him get the last word is becoming increasing familiar, and he _hates it._

After he gives the costume back to John Grayson, runs into Dickie beside the stage, where he’s busy getting his face done by a bearded woman who Damian hasn’t met. When he turns to Damian, or tries to before his face is aggressively turned away by a hard grip on his chin, both eyes are outlined in black eyeliner. There’s something sparkly on his cheekbones that glitter beneath the stage lights. Damian can see bobby pins hidden in his hair, holding his already gelled locks firmly in place.

He whines as the woman goes about spreading a slightly darker skin color makeup down his neck. “Just-one-sec-” he says, finally breaking free from her grip and barrelling towards Damian. Instead of hugging him or… whatever he seemed like he was going to do, Damian actually has no idea, the boy grabs his arm as he flies past, dragging him along.

“Dickie!” the bearded woman calls after them, but Dickie is rushing past the stage crew with no intention of stopping.

“Quick!” he hisses, turning around to shove Damian into a costume rack that’s peculiarly loitering beside the concession stand. He trips on the bottom steel bar and falls to the ground behind it, in a corner, dragging an assortment of glittery costumes on top of himself in the process. He tosses a leopard leotard lined with sequins off his face in order to scowl as Dickie hides himself behind a gigantic fur coat with him.

They watch as the bearded lady hurries past them. Conveniently, a crewman wheels the costume rack away from them just as she disappears from sight.

“Shouldn’t you be getting--” Damian starts, but Dickie is already tugging him up by the wrist and leading him back to where they came. His protests fall on deaf ears. They pass by the spot that the woman had cornered Dickie in, and continue all the way to the edge of the tent. Dick pulls back a flap and they emerge into the biting spring air. “Where are we going?” Damian demands.

“Nowhere!” he calls, running up to the only trailer that Damian has no idea the purpose of. It’s smaller than the others, and when Dick opens the door, he realizes that’s because it’s only one room.

He’s assaulted with heat and the smell of burning hair. A woman passes in front of him barely dressed, her dress unhooked from her shoulders and laying limp at her waist. He turns immediately back around to leave.

Instead, Dickie pulls him into the room. Damian stares with wide eyes at the woman who’s entirely unconcerned by the fact that her bra is flashing two teenage boys. She has the audacity to look at him with confusion.

“She won’t find us here!” Dickie chirps happily, perching himself on top of a flat countertop that runs the entire length of the far wall. It’s right in front of a mirror that’s so dirty Damian can hardly see his own reflection.

There are two doors on either sides of the room, both unmarked. A man emerges from the one on the right, attempting to tie his long hair up into a bun. Men and women in various states of undress cluster together in front of the mirrors, applying makeup to their faces. One woman shakes a can of hairspray and is about to apply it to a girl with a waterfall of blonde curls, but the man with the bun immediately calls, “Hairspray goes outside!” and she apologises. She and the girl get up and immediately bustle past Damian on their way out. There’s a small old fatback TV with view of the stage in the upper corner, suspended precariously.

“In the dressing room, where everyone else can see you and tell her where you are?” Damian remarks, walking up to Dickie on the counter, doing his best not to touch anyone. He considers the counter, but he doesn’t know which brown and red and blue stains are permanent makeup stains and which ones are fresh, and he doesn’t feel like making his pants particularly colorful tonight.

Dickie shrugs, unconcerned. “We’ll leave in a few minutes, obviously.”

“But you’ve cornered yourself in a trailer that has only one exit,” Damian points out. Dickie takes moment to think about that. Meanwhile, Damian mentally reviews everything he saw on the way to their current destination. “I have an idea.”

They go back the way that they came, with Dickie on the lookout for bearded lady sightings. Damian teaches him how to scale the spotlights on the inside perimeter of the tent. It’s probably the worst thing he could teach to a circus kid notorious for liking high places without also the additional gadgets meant to catch him in case he makes a mistake, but Damian revels in the feeling of watching Dick, any version of him at all, ask _Damian_ the questions.

They settle themselves upright with their feet angled along the sloped rods of the lighting truss, entrapped by black beams appearing with just enough frequency to catch them if they fell. Dickie peers through the spaces between the bars like he’s looking out at a fairytale land from behind a jail cell. Alarmingly, he decides to balance himself further away from the structure than Damian is comfortable with, allowing half his body and a splayed arm to dangle in empty space. Damian hastily adjusts his position to the back of the structure to even the weight distribution.

“The spotlights are so bright that you can’t see _jack_ on the trapeze,” Dickie says, body posture brimming with excitement, swinging himself precariously around the bars and nearly knocking his forehead on a diagonal beam. “And it’s not the same when they’re off.”

“You’re going to fall,” Damian blurts, anxiously listening for sounds of creaking above the sounds of the light crew shouting at each other.

“Graysons _never_ fall.”

There’s a sudden commotion below, and Dick takes that as a sign to plant his feet more sturdily on the truss, much to Damian’s relief. The last thing he needs is to screw up the future by prematurely getting his future mentor/pseudo-brother killed by something as lame as falling (like father like son). He does lean over the slightest bit to get a good look, though, and appears about to call down below when he sees the source of the commotion.

A shrill, slurred whistle announces the cause.

“A blackbird?” he asks, attempting to peer over Dickie’s shoulder, but the boy is suddenly an unmoving statue, carved out of marble for all that Damian can make out.

Treading carefully, he makes his way beside Dickie now that the boy is no longer dangling by a hand and a foot. He looks to his face, expecting to see… well, he’s not entirely sure what he’s expecting to see, but it isn’t the troubled expression that he does. The boy is worrying his lip absentmindedly, eyes locked on the opposite side of the stage. Stagehands are drawing the tent flaps so widely apart that nearly a quarter of the big top’s insides are exposed to the open air.

“What’s wrong?”

Dickie doesn’t seem to hear him, and they wait in silence as various performers and crew attempt to guide the bird out of the tent. It doesn’t take more than five minutes, but to Damian it feels like an eternity. When the bird finally flees, the inside of the tent is almost quiet -- an ominous occurrence that presses down on them from an indeterminate point above.

“We should get down,” Dickie whispers, suddenly solemn.

Damian frowns at him as the boy leads the way. He doesn’t move at first, almost certain he’s joking. But it quickly becomes apparent that Dickie is looking for nothing but to get both his feet on solid ground.

That’s new.

“What happened?” Damian asks, because something did, and despite standing there the entire time he can’t help but feel that he’s missing something significant.

Dickie gives him a wide-eyed side look like he’s crazy. He fidgets a foot away from the truss as he waits for Damian to join him. He deliberately takes his sweet time, if only to further unnerve his (now younger) brother. “Dickie?”

“Don’t you know about bad omens?” Dickie answers in a harsh, accusatory hiss.

“I don’t understand what’s so bad about a blackbird.”

“It’s not just a _bird,”_ Dick insists. “Actually, the whole _point_ is because they’re good. But a bird trapped in a tent… that’s not. A bird should be free. Someone must have kept the flap open,” he says quietly. “We always keep it closed.”

“Because of birds?” Damian repeats, because he still can’t see what the problem is. Birds get trapped inside places all the time.

“They say a trapped bird warns of death.”

Damian takes in the atmosphere around him. He spends a moment just listening. But there’s not much to hear. Not even the crew is chatting with one another beyond what’s necessary, and most of them have left anyway, which can’t be usual protocol so close to a show.

“And you believe that?” Damian asks around the lump in his throat.

Dickie seems to shrink into himself, like he’s trying to make himself the smallest thing in the room. Another rare occurrence. “It’s what we’ve believed since… forever, probably,” he says. “Why would we all still hold onto it if it weren’t true?”

He wonders if Dick still believes in bad omens.

He wonders if he should.

* * *

Eventually, the stage manager climbs onto the stage and recognizes Dickie instantly, even as hidden in the back as they are. He must immediately alert the bearded lady -- her name is Ivet -- because soon thereafter she appears and grabs Dickie by his ear to hold him still in order to finish darkening his neck and eyebrows.

When she’s finally satisfied, people are already filling the seats beside them, and the tent echoes with the sounds of hundreds of voices. Many people are staring at Ivet, therefore they’re also staring at Damian and Dickie, and Damian shuffles awkwardly until Dickie is released from her clutches and he can start finding his way to the exit.

“There’s live video in the dressing room,” Dickie says, and Damian nods. He follows Dickie as the boy expertly weaves his way among the crowd, but stops abruptly when he sees a familiar face, standing awkwardly in contrast against the tent walls with the air of someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“Dick!” Damian calls on impulse, and both Dick and Dickie turn to look at him. A person jostles his shoulder as they try to balance a large bucket of popcorn and two giant sodas.

“Yeah?” Dickie responds, and Damian sees Dick’s head jerk towards his younger self as he follows Damian’s gaze.

Puzzled, Dickie looks back and forth between them. For some odd reason, that’s what spurs Damian into action. Heart pounding, he steps to the side, mostly out of the way of the stream of circus goers, and beckons Dickie closer. “Dickie, this is my brother, Ron. Ron, this is Dickie.”

Dick continues to stare, which obviously makes Dickie feel nervous, but he (admirably, although Damian dismisses the thought) pushes that down in order to offer out a hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” he says. His voice lacks the overzealous note that tends to accompany his interactions with strangers. The atmosphere between them is still bogged down by the appearance of the blackbird. “Ibn is awfully swell to hang with.”

An embarrassing noise comes from Damian’s throat which he hurriedly attempts to squash, because Dick _never gets to make fun of his vocabulary usage again._ Damian can’t sound older than Dick did when he was a kid. Dick knows exactly what Damian’s thinking too, because he makes an aborted gesture with his hand like he’s about to use it to cover his face. It takes a moment for him to use it for shaking Dickie’s hand instead.

“Uhm,” he croaks, slack-jawed like a fish. “Yeah.”

Damian wants to wring his neck. _He’s_ not supposed to be the socially inept one. “So,” he says loudly, attracting back Dickie’s relieved attention (not Dick’s, though). “I think Ron and I will stay here to watch the show. I haven’t been to a circus before, after all.”

“Sounds good. Enjoy the show!” Dickie chirps and makes a hurried escape.

Damian glares at Dick, who’s staring after Dickie with an expression that’s difficult to read. “You’re useless,” he snaps.

But when Dick turns back around, he doesn’t look the least bit irritated by the remark. His face is a conflicted mix of wonder and grief, but he quirks the edge of his lips up anyway, enough for only one cheek to dimple. “I was so cute. What happened?”

“I don’t hear your numerous partners complaining,” Damian says, making his way down the aisle. The front row seats have yet to be filled.

“To be fair, I doubt they want me anything other than legally of age,” Dick says. “Wait, hold up, the best seats are back here. Your neck will hurt if you sit too close.”

Damian obeys, and they sit in the very back, which has been elevated from the other rows by an extra platform. He sits down and casts Dick a suspicious glance, because for all his jokes, he doesn’t believe for a moment that he’s fine.

And he isn’t. There’s an strange stillness in him, one Damian remembers only after Bruce ‘died’, when Dick would stare at his suit like it held every secret he never wanted to know. He’s looking blankly at the seats in front of him now, barely aborting the movement to tip forward and rest his elbows on his knees because that’s always his give-away brooding position. He picked it up from Bruce.

“It’s a big tent,” Damian says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. But it makes Dick look up and look around. His eyes catch on the empty trapeze bars.

“Yeah. Big and made of canvas. Which is really stupid, now that I think back on it,” Dick says, clasping his hands together and rubbing at the knuckle of his thumb. “It’s a miracle one of the fire breathers didn’t catch the thing on fire. But Haly was all about authenticity. Do you know how heavy this much wet canvas is?”

“Light as a feather?”

Dick snorts. “Let’s just say that we transported elephants everywhere, and yet we still dreaded spring rain.”

“I’m sure choosing Gotham as a destination was a carefully planned decision on their part, then.”

Dick glances at him finally, and his eyes are focused intently on his face, enough to the point of almost-discomfort, when his lips finally form into an expression that’s more of a smile than a grimace. “I can’t tell if you got your sarcasm from Bruce, Alfred, or Tim, because it sure as hell wasn’t Talia.”

“My father isn’t sarcastic.”

“Oh, he’s sarcastic. He just does it in a way that you don’t realize it until two hours after the fact.”

“Why are you here?” The question bursts out of Damian without warning. He was hoping to wait until it was less of a non sequitur, but there’s nothing he can do about it now.

“Well, last I was aware, I didn’t ask to be rudely transported back in time--”

“Grayson.”

“Huh. You haven’t called me that in a while. Is that your version of the middle name thing? I don’t think it’ll work as well as you want it to if you have kids.”

Damian glowers at him, unimpressed.

“Right,” he says, clipped. Dick takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and says as flippantly as he can: “I thought about what you said. Figured you might have a point.”

“I always have a point.”

“See, this is why I didn’t want to say anything,” Dick says with melodramatic despair. “It only goes to your already-inflated head.”

The more sassy Damian’s remark, the more… normal Dick’s response is, as if they’re doing nothing more than trading quips in a place no more remarkable than an arcade. So Damian keeps talking, saying any baiting comment that comes to mind, until there are people seated all around them and the lights are dimming to start the show.

Damian’s never seen anyone breathe fire before.

It’s nothing spectacular, when he really thinks about it. He has enough education in chemistry (more than most people in the room, no doubt) to understand all the possibilities of what Amelia might be doing, even though he’s never researched the art. The tightrope walkers are probably cheating, the athletic prowess of the women and men in ribbons could probably be trumped by anyone Damian knows, and Samson is no match for Superman. The lion taming _is_ impressive, though.

But the spectacle takes over the tent so completely that it’s easy -- even for him -- to look past its mechanics. Dick, on the other hand, was entirely immersed in the display from the start. He’s staring in fascination as if it’s the first time he’s ever seen such a performance, the spotlight reflected in his watery eyes. Damian turns back to the show and tries to find the same sight that’s so fully capturing Dick.

Fog billows from unseen vents, clouding between the performers and the crimson spotlights on the ground, folding in on itself and moving like the way his breath looked at the top of the Himalayas during any of his many hikes. It climbs higher and higher, obscuring the details of the top of the tent, spreading light like a diffuser lens, offering an ethereal bubble for the athletes twisting and turning between the air and the floor as if they have as many bones as a snake.

And then it’s time for the Flying Graysons.

It starts with one man. John Grayson. He arcs elegantly through the air, then hooks his legs around the bars and lets go. But if the crowd goes wild at that, it’s nothing compared to how they sound a moment later as he unhooks his legs to catch the next bar with his hands and doesn’t swing as expected. Instead, he goes forward with the momentum until he’s doing a handstand on the bar itself, and then he’s doing a backflip but he’s catching the top of the bar with his hands, and now he’s almost at the end but he isn’t done -- he’s grabbing a woman at the landing.

So Mary, with her beautiful brown hair wrapped tightly on her head, swings into the spotlight as if she weighs less than the air itself, and lets go of John in order to hook onto the next bar with her legs. But she’s not about to be outdone by her husband. She swings until she’s sitting on the bar, and then she’s getting up, and while the bar is swaying she jumps and twists and twirls through the air, sideways, the bar going out from under her and letting her fall back into the arms of her husband.

It seems like no time at all until a little bird is joining the ranks with them, and Damian is captivated. Because the boy seems so natural up there, even if he can’t match the grace of his parents -- not yet. And Damian knows, somewhere that doesn’t need evidence to reach its conclusions, that he’s smiling.

He might know that because Dick is smiling, too. In fact, he’s grinning, white teeth turned blue by the reflection of the changing lights, and dimples so deep they look borderline painful. He jerks like he’s about to get out of his seat to stand up and clap when the little bird in the air finishes his set with a flip that spins him through the air four times.

The jubilation turns to dread when the boy leaves the scene, and the net is removed.

Dread turns to clammy hands and a pale face when the Graysons all land -- safe and sound, faces bright and glittery, on the platform.

The lights turn to a full wash and people begin to leave, but Dick bows like a willow weighed down with too much snow to hide his face in his hands. Damian awkwardly hovers his hand in the air, not sure what to do with it, and eventually settles for putting it softly on Dick’s back. But it reminds him too much of Bruce, and while normally Damian wouldn’t mind being a little more like his father, it isn’t… natural, here. He doesn’t want to take the place of Dick’s mentor, of the adult. So he leans with the hand until his chest is almost touching Dick’s arm, until he can wrap his arms awkwardly from the side and press his cheek to his shoulder like it’s just another pillow.

Dick lets him, soon bringing a hand up to rest at the top of Damian’s hair, automatic. It takes him only a few moments to start running his fingers through the locks, and Damian closes his eyes and concentrates on that feeling, on the way Dick’s back moves as he breathes. He only lets go when the sounds of the crowd start to die down.

They say very little that night. There’s the usual celebration of a successful opening night -- a bonfire with dancing and singing and good food. But Damian isn’t especially fond of the way the smoke from the fire keeps blowing into his face no matter where he stands or sits, so he’s quick to leave. He joins Dick in their room and sneaks glances at him every so often, waiting for what seems like the inevitable remark, comment, _something._ But it never comes. By the time they go to sleep, Damian still can’t decipher what the look of teary wonder is in his eyes -- or what a soft, private smile means when it shakes.

* * *

 

Damian does go to the bonfire the next day, and this time Dick joins him. In fact, he stuck around the entire day, rarely going back to the trailer except when Samson ran around with Dickie on his back, and the boy threw his hands up in the air and shrieked. He hasn’t sought the Graysons out, but he hasn’t gone out of his way to avoid them either, going so far as to observe them from a distance.

Damian isn’t sure if he’s proud of Dick’s progress or dreading it. What was said in the trailer hasn’t been forgotten, and the memory of an absent space in front of him where Dick is supposed to be haunts all the moments in the day when he stands without something to do.

Of course, Dick’s good luck doesn’t last.

“Ibn!” Dickie calls, getting to the bonfire late. One of the stagehands spilled coffee all over the front of his costume right after he got off, so he had to spend extra time attempting to wash the bulk of it out before it could stain. Mary is with him, and there’s a heartstopping moment, punctuated by the brief panic of Dick’s own face, where he thinks she’s going to follow Dickie. Luckily, she’s pulled aside by Harry before she can get that far. “I nailed it _twice!”_

“I saw,” Damian replies.

“That’s really impressive,” Dick says, and Damian has a split second where he thinks he’s hallucinating, because this is more than he thought Dick would attempt. “A quadruple flip, I mean.”

Does this qualify as narcissism?

Dickie beams, lips stretching like he’s trying to show his teeth off to someone a mile away, eyes squinting in that way Damian knows so well, as if he’s happier the less he can see. “I just nailed it two days ago! And I did it _twice!_ I’m going to be so good some day. I’ll be just like mom!” He leans over to whisper theatrically in Damian’s ear: “She’s way better than dad. But don’t tell him that.”

It isn’t so much pain as it is nausea that settles heavily in Damian’s gut. He suddenly feels the consequences from eating too many of the chocolate bars Harry handed out intimately well.

“Yeah, I think you will too.”

“Thanks!” Dickie smiles at him happily, none the wiser, before turning to Dick. “Hey, have I seen you before? Like, I know I just saw you earlier, but… you look _really_ familiar.”

“I guess I just have one of those faces,” responds Dick too-loudly, and Dickie shrugs before plopping on the plastic fold up chair beside Damian.

“I guess.” He still squints at Dick a little longer before he drops the subject.

It’s not the most spectacular of first (second?) meetings, but it’s one that doesn’t involve any horrible event preceding the end-of-the-world, so Damian takes it. He stays close to Dick with the increasing volume of the gathering, as people join and break away to form their own groups. Damian eventually glances up and finds spots of bonfire light strewn all over the campground like stars. The Graysons are at a bonfire nearby, the closest one on Dickie’s side, passing around a bottle between Harry and Wilhelm. For whatever indiscernible reason, Dickie hasn’t made any move to join them, instead preferring to throw marshmallows at a girl seated on the log across from him.

It isn’t much longer after that when someone approaches their fire, occupied mostly by people he doesn’t know with the exception of Dick, Dickie, and Amelia. The man who approaches goes to another man on the leftmost end of the log, the one who has a hearty laugh that could rock stadiums and a belly and posture that reminds him of cartoon depictions of Santa Claus.

The first one, lanky with an ashy brown face that’s creased in wrinkles, sits a long drum shaped like a flashlight between the second one’s knees. The second man grins and hands it to his wife, who hands it to the kids, who hand it to the man beside Amelia, who puts it on the ground and bangs on it hard enough to echo through Damian’s chest.

 _“Yala!”_ Dickie calls in response. Damian stares at him, because for a moment it doesn’t register to him what’s being said, until he realizes it’s _Arabic._ But he only realizes that because Dickie continues: “Yala, yala, yala, yala yeshiba!”

He’s _singing._

Damian looks to Dick to help, who stares at the man with the drum like he’s the most entertaining man he ever saw. It’s no help. “You knew Arabic?” he asks Dick, because he always figured the man only learned Arabic after being taken in by Bruce.

“Hell no. But I know the song. Sorta,” Dick says.

“The song?”

“The song! You don’t know the song?”

“I know that you’re saying to ‘Hurry up’ more times than necessary,” Damian says. “With the addition of musical notes.”

Dick grins, slightly yellowed teeth in a dazzling row. “It’s some Arabic and Farsi song that Hamza used to play all the time. Like, _all_ the time.”

On cue, Amelia groans and says, “Don’t you know _anything_ else?”

“I like it!” Dickie protests. “It’s catchy!”

“You haven’t lived enough years to learn how annoying it is yet,” responds Amelia.

Out of nowhere comes an acoustic guitar, brandished by the older man whose light brown eyes twinkle with mirth. He’s laughing at something a woman Damian doesn’t know at the Grayson’s bonfire is shouting, and the familiar tones of the familiar language wash over him in a disorienting case of deja vu. “Unless Fariba sings, I’m leaving!”

“I think Dickie should sing,” Damian responds, in Arabic, the words a strange weight on his tongue, his mouth tripping over the shapes of the vowels and Hamza with the drum looks over at him with an expression so pleased that he’s immediately uncomfortable.

“Abdul, this one speaks!” Hamza puts down the drum and runs over to draw Damian in by the shoulder. He tenses up. “What was your name, darling child?”

“Ibn.”

“Ibn! Ibn, do you know the song?”

“No, sorry. But Dickie does.”

Hamza looks over at Dickie, who looks between them baffled. He obviously heard his name. Hamza switches to English. “You know the words, habibi?”

“Uh, I know the sounds of them,” he responds, unsure of himself, but Hamza laughs a booming laugh and claps him on the shoulder so hard he nearly sends the nine year old into the bonfire face first.

“Then sing!”

Dickie glances around nervously at first, but with some encouragement, he begins:

 

 

> “Yalla yalla yalla
> 
> Yalla ya shaba
> 
> Yalla yalla yalla
> 
> Lal ghahrni ya shaba!”

The accent isn’t… awful. It’s not the best, but it’s better than he was expecting. At least his r's are correct.

After the first chorus, he’s no longer alone. Hamza has joined, his booming voice carrying across all the campgrounds, and with him is the woman he was speaking to. And suddenly, the other man beside him starts singing lyrics in Farsi, translating what he’s saying in the form of a duet.

Damian feels weird, even after the song is over. Off-kilter. His presence here isn’t quite aligned with reality and he doesn’t know how to feel. The sounds of a language so familiar are taking him back to another place, but everything around it is so… wrong.

The music is wrong. It’s recognizable, but it’s not the music he grew up with. The beat of the drum was never made gladly, and there were never lyrics interrupted by clapping or by laughing. It was beautiful music made professionally, technically, but never like this. Even if Dickie doesn’t know the words, he knows this world more than Damian does, and it’s strange.

“I don’t like that I understand it now,” Dick says as if on cue, and he’s wearing a smile too. Damian stares at him because that in of itself isn’t unusual, but in that moment, he resents the expression. He feels so off-balance that he wants someone off-balance with him, but Dick… isn’t. The only person who possibly could match how he feels, and he’s left Damian to flounder alone. “It’s really boring, christ. It sounded prettier when I didn’t know what it meant.”

The song never ends, either. It continues until lyrics have been repeated so many times they’re drilled permanently into Damian’s head, and then the next song begins. But Dickie isn’t singing those, so Hamza and Abdul wander off to join other friends who are more enthusiastically singing along with them, and Amelia leans forward to say, “Once, when we were in Toronto…”

Dick finally melts beside him. Not visibly, but in subtle shifts that Damian learned to read as easily as he learned to read Charles Dickens. He leans away from Damian in order to get personal with the fire, with the people around him who won’t ever be anything in Damian’s head but strangers. The way he stands up and paces, gesticulates wildly, tells a story that he’s told a million times before with edits for secrecy inserted so smoothly that if Damian didn’t know better, he’d believe them too.

He’s seen his brother like this a few times, with the Titans or in videos Kory got from Roy got from Donna got from Wally with him tipsy and regaling his audience of a few passed out friends about his adventures in Paris. But never with him, never this close, and never so sober.

Damian’s starting to understand more as time passes the way his family isn’t the norm, tense with walls and ready to break apart with just a spark to fireworks. He knows it clinically and factually the way he knows history from textbooks. But it’s better than he used to have. He never thought about how that might only be the case for him.

* * *

It isn’t long after the storytelling starts that Mary and John get up to escape indoors. They tap on Amelia’s shoulder and she decides to join them. They get Dickie to tag along, who doesn’t even ask before he’s tugging Damian after him.

He casts only one glance at Dick, but the sight of him pleasantly chattering away with strangers twists something inside of him. He doesn’t look back after that.

They go inside the Grayson’s family trailer, and that’s when Damian finds out it isn’t actually their trailer. Dickie’s staying in Amelia’s trailer, John in Samson’s, and Mary in Wilhelm’s. They’re so crammed together that personal space is virtually impossible, but it lends the feeling of warmth instead of claustrophobia (to everyone else, anyway). While they’re sipping hot chocolate from chipped mugs because the night isn’t too warm for once, Dickie explains with no shame that Damian and Dick are currently sleeping in what’s officially his sleeping quarters.

“I still get my bed, though,” Dickie add. “It’s easier to move so I got to take it with me.”

“We wanted to make sure you guys had room,” Amelia says. It’s her trailer that the entire family plus Damian have crowded themselves into. She’s sitting cross legged on the only bed, an absurdly fluffy lion pillow propping her back, her bright blonde hair mingling with its faux fur. “Speaking of which, I was gonna ask: Do you need any extra blankets or sheets? We stripped the bed before we left and I meant to bring some by but kept forgetting.” She gives a sheepish smile. “I know it’s already been a while, but…”

“No, we’re okay,” Damian says, trying to figure out what he’s supposed to respond with. Something along the lines of ‘you didn’t have to do that’ or ‘there’s an empty bed someone can sleep in’, but at the same time he’s relieved for the space and he doesn’t want anyone to think he’s serious about the offer. It’s cramped enough with two people, and he’s never been good at censoring his speech for extended periods of time.

“I was actually planning on asking your brother this, but I can never seem to catch him,” Mary interjects, stirring honey into her hot chocolate, Dick’s favorite way of drinking it. “I know you were planning on calling your folks tomorrow morning, after you saw a few shows, but Haly and I were talking and we were wondering if you wanted to stay here through the weekend? We’re heading up to New York this Monday and it’d make us feel better if we knew you got home safely. Weekends are kind of insane. Keeping track of people during them is already hard enough.” She gives the bottle of honey to Dickie after she’s done with it. He tips his head back and starts squeezing honey into his mouth, but when Mary shoots him a look, he turns away and starts discreetly pooling it on the tip of his finger to suck on. John offers him a spoon.

Damian hopes the relief isn’t visible on his face. While he knows Dick would probably want to try finding somewhere else to stay, he doesn’t want to stray too far from where they appeared. He doesn’t understand enough about time travel to do that, and the risk of missing whoever comes to get them by being in the wrong place at the wrong time (a theme, it seems) is too great. “I’m sure he’d be fine with that.”

Dickie raises his hand for a high five so quickly he spills chocolate on his pants. He doesn’t notice, but John immediately heads for the sink to dampen a nearby rag. “Yes!” Dickie exclaims as Damian slaps his hand. “I have time show you the tigers!”

While Dickie is in the middle of reciting one of the many fun facts about one of the numerous exotic animals nearby, Amelia interjects with a story about the time Dickie was chased by a peacock. Somehow, it prompts Damian to share his own stories, but they’re significantly less fun than what anyone else has to share. He ends up recounting a very watered down version (that doesn’t involve starvation or death at all, which accounts for the majority of the original story) of the time he tried to ride a llama (he doesn’t mention killing the llama at the end, either. He doesn’t want to think about it as much as he doesn’t want anyone else to). Dickie’s never seen a llama, so it ends up turning into a myths vs facts session about llamas, and then exchanging stories about South America, which turns into folklore about the Incas, then Roma folklore, then Arabic folklore, then Chinese folklore… and before they know it, Dickie and Damian are the only ones still awake.

Mary and John had left some time ago, and Amelia had gone to bed, leaving Damian and Dickie to lay beside each other on the ground. Giving Dickie chocolate so late at night definitely wasn’t the brightest idea, because Damian thinks that’s the only reason he’s still up at all.

“He dared me!”

“So?”

“He was gonna think I’m a coward if I didn’t do it. And it was only the top of the train. I’ve climbed on top of higher things before. I’m an _acrobat,_ for pete’s sake.”

“But by doing it without question, you were letting him dictate the rules,” Damian advises. “Next time, do the dare, but make sure you get something out of it too. What if you had said that if you successfully landed a flip, he had to do all of your chores the next day? Winning a bet like that would be a lot more beneficial.”

Dickie squints seriously up at the ceiling. “You’re right.” The pensive look is broken when he grins. “Maybe I should do it again.”

“He won’t fall for it now.”

“Bummer,” says Dickie, frowning. “Have you ever done any cool dares?”

The question is innocent enough, but Damian stares at the same spot Dickie was examining and realises that it’s unnecessarily hard for him to answer. Just like most things seem to be lately.

“Not as dares. I’ve done difficult things because people told me to, but it wasn’t for fun.”

“Like what?”

“I…” He can’t say anything involving murder, that’s for sure. No theft, either. But if he’s since returned it… “I once stole the head off of a magical, occasionally sentient stone statue that was guarded by old spells and curses.”

Dickie watches him unblinkingly. “What’s sentient?”

“Alive. Kind of.”

His eyes go wide like Christmas ornaments. “No way. You’re lying.”

“I don’t lie.” When he doesn’t need to, anyway.

But Dickie still looks skeptical. He must not be able to decide on whether to believe him or not, because his next response is: “But stealing is wrong.”

“I returned it.”

“Good.” Dickie looks satisfied by the answer, but Damian can’t help but add:

“Yeah. It’s… nice. I don’t feel so bad about it anymore. But I thought..." Dickie’s inquisitive eyes prompt him to go on. “Well, the way everyone makes it sound, it’s like I shouldn’t feel any guilt at all anymore. But I do.” He almost croaks on the last bit -- his chest his tight, his breathing short, and he hates this. But Dick is the only person he can talk to, he’s the only one who won’t judge, and what’s Damian supposed to do if Dick is also one of the only people he’s so desperate to impress? Who better to trust than a version of him who isn’t yet the best?

There’s a moment of peace until Dickie says: “I once stole a pencil from Mrs. Felder because it had a really good eraser and I needed it for my test. I lost it and I felt really bad, so I stole a pencil from Mr. Haly’s office to give it back to her, which just made me feel worse. But then Mrs. Felder said that she had too many pencils anyway, so I gave it back to Mr. Haly.”

Damian arches his eyebrows. “And the point of telling me this is?”

Dickie bites his lip. “Well, I still feel bad about it. It’s the reason I remember it. Mama said you only ever remember the things you feel bad about. So I never did it again. I mean, she said that if you didn’t feel any more guilt after giving something back, then no one would stop stealing. So we’re supposed to feel bad about stuff. It’s what makes us better.”

As Damian rolls the nine year old’s words over in his head, he wonders if there was ever a time in Dick’s life when he _wasn’t_ trying to teach other people something.

Probably not. He’s a show-off like that.

Still, he finds himself… not minding it so much. Not as much as he used to, at least. Instead, he runs his finger over the mouth of his long-since empty mug and nods. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

And that’s something Dick will _never_ hear.

As an adult, anyway.

“Oh! Before I forget,” says Dickie suddenly, reaching into the deep pockets of his colorful pants that look like they were bought from a 60’s themed thrift shop. When he finds what he’s looking for, he holds his fist out enthusiastically, and Damian opens his palm so he can drop something inside. “It’s hair from Zitka’s tail,” he explains as Damian examines the coarse, grey hair. “I woulda made it into a bracelet, but I’m not too good at that yet. Willy’s still teaching me.”

“Okay,” Damian responds, and his slow drawl must give something of his confusion away because Dickie tilts his head like he can’t understand what’s so confusing. “Is there a reason why you’re giving me an elephant’s tail?”

It takes a second, but then he grins like Damian’s the one doing something funny. “It’s good luck, silly. Everyone knows that. And Zitka is the best elephant around, so she gives the best luck. You’ll see.”

“That sounds ironically ominous.”

“What’s om-eh-nous?”

Damian snorts. He’s not entirely sure why, but maybe he’s just that tired. He lets a small smile nudge at the corners of his lips. “Don’t worry about it.”

They talk until they fall asleep. When Damian wakes up, he hardly remembers ever closing his eyes.

* * *

At first, Damian doesn’t show up for breakfast.

He couldn’t get himself to go, heart pounding uncomfortably even while he was laying down, stirring him into action. He snuck out of Amelia’s trailer and around Dickie’s prone form to take a walk around the grounds, and then when that proved too short, a walk into the city. But there was a cloud hanging over it that screamed for him to go away, and apprehension mixed in a concoction of familiarity and oddity ensured he didn’t argue. Still, he didn’t make his way into the meal tent even after everyone else began waking up. He stayed beside Zitka (it’s been too long since he saw an elephant) until he could avoid people no longer.

Even then, he goes to the trailer first.

Dick’s awake. Damian can tell even with the addition of a pillow shoved over his face. He’s being avoided. But this time, instead of avoiding him in turn like the trend has been for the last few days, he goes and takes a seat on his legs.

“Ow, Dami,” Dick says, his voice muffled. He tries to buck him off. Damian adjusts so he’s on his knees. _“Ow.”_

When he starts pulling the blanket off the bottom half of Dick’s body, the pillow smacks him in the face. “Don’t,” Dick threatens. “I’m not in the mood.”

Damian tickles his feet.

“Don’t-- Dami-- Stop!” he protests, jostling the sheets enough that Damian flails for balance and falls onto his back. But he doesn’t relent, and rolls over quick enough to get Dick under the arms. Dick promptly attempts to engage him in a headlock, but Damian’s expecting it and ducks out of the way, leaving the man to half crawl half grab after him.

It devolves, as expected, into a wrestling match. Once again, as expected, Dick ends as victor, Damian with his arms tight behind his back and trapped with said back to Dick, his older brother wrapped around him like an octopus. Damian glares petulantly at Dick from where he can see his reflection in the mirror.

“Christ kid, dealing with you’s a workout,” Dick says, dropping his lock on his little brother to slump onto his own back. Damian unwraps Dick’s legs from around his middle so he can sit beside him.

“I learned from the best.”

There’s a pause as Dick stares at the ceiling and turns Damian’s response over in his head. “You know,” he says after a while, “I’ve just spent this entire time trying to figure out the double meaning to that, and I don’t think there is one. I think you really did just compliment me.”

“I was talking about Batman.”

The knot in his chest loosens its hold by the most miniscule amount when Dick gives a half hearted laugh.

“I’m joking,” Damian reassures awkwardly. It earns him a curious glance.

“I know. You suck ass at telling the truth. You’re lucky I can read between the lines.”

“Jon can’t. I’ve had to practice.”

“That’s what happens when you get raised by Mr. Nice Guy.”

They’re avoiding the elephant in the room, but that’s normal.

“Aren’t you going to breakfast?” Dick finally asks, pulling the blanket towards him so he can hide in it again. Damian kicks it away.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re always hungry. Go eat.”

“Only if you come with me.”

“I’m tired.”

“You’re never tired.”

“I’m always tired.” Dick finally gives up on pulling the blanket to him and crawls over to it instead, rolling up like a burrito before Damian can stop him.

Dick knows what he’s trying to do, of course. He’s not trying to keep it secret. “It’s Sunday,” he says, and then regrets it.

“Trust me, I know."

“If we stay in here all day, Batman won’t be able to find us.”

“Batman can find anyone.”

“He’ll have to either ask directions or break into every trailer and it’ll be awkward for everyone involved.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Batman is the living breathing personification of ‘awkward’.”

Damian pushes at the burrito with one of his feet. “When do you think he’ll come? It’s already been days.”

Dick sighs, hard enough that Damian sees the whole blanket bundle rise and fall with it. “I don’t know, Dami. I’ll be sure to ask Tim what the exact ratio is between the timestream here and the timestream there when we get back. He’ll probably know with how much he gets caught up in it.”

“And if we don’t get back?”

“We will.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because if we don’t, I’m going to punch Wally in the face _so hard_ that he’ll fuck the timestream up again and send us home.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Damian responds, even as he tries not to show how entertained he is at the thought. He wouldn’t be opposed to a mission like that. “It would probably be more reliable to punch Barry instead.”

Dick gives some non-committal noise from within his cocoon.

The whole situation is surreal. There’s an itch crawling over his skin. It feels dirty and oily, but that might be because he has yet to find where the showers are.

“I’m going to bring back some food.”

Again with the noise. He takes it as confirmation.

Under the mess tent, Damian navigates as swiftly and unobtrusively as he possibly can, but somehow Dickie sees him anyway. “There you are!” he declares as he runs into his chest and wraps his arms around his middle. Damian has to quickly raise his two plates of food high into the air to keep it safe. Dickie steps back, sees what’s on the plate in his right hand, and grabs a slice of buttered toast for himself.

He figures he can’t complain, since the toast was for Dick anyway.

“Where did you go? Everyone’s really tired and being boring. Wanna play soccer?”

“No,” Damian responds and continues grabbing food. “Do you like bacon?” he asks before he can stop himself.

“Yeah,” Dickie says neutrally.

Damian wrinkles his nose at the smell and doesn’t touch it. Dickie casts him an odd look but doesn’t comment.

“Well, I meant we can play soccer after you eat.”

“No.”

Dickie pouts. “Why not?”

“I’m tired,” Damian declares.

“You haven’t even done anything!”

“It’s been a weird weekend.”

Dickie tugs at his free arm in protest. “Oh come on, don’t be boring like everyone else!”

Damian doesn’t know what Dickie’s argument after that was going to be because the moment the boy makes to keep talking, he grabs a muffin off the pastry table and shoves it in his open mouth. Dickie exclaims something in muffled indignation.

“I’ll see you later,” Damian says, hoping partially that he doesn’t. It occurs to him only after he gets back to the trailer that maybe he should have said his goodbyes. Just in case.

When he walks inside, he discovers that Dick has already re-wrapped himself in his blankets. He grumbles in despair at Damian’s reappearance. “I was positive mini me was gonna distract you,” he whines.

“I would have thought you’d be used to me ignoring you by now,” Damian responds, pulling back the blanket and shoving another muffin in his mouth. Dick doesn’t try talking with it. He just gives him a withering look, takes it out, and puts it back on the plate. He grabs the second piece of toast instead.

“You and Bruce are the only people who can successfully ignore me. It’s definitely a hereditary trait.” He frowns at the rest of the plate. “No bacon?”

“I’m vegetarian.”

“But I’m not.”

“Then maybe you should have gotten your own breakfast.”

Dick concedes his point and takes the rest of the plate meant for him. Damian sits cross-legged on the ground beside his blanket burrito and eats his own food in silence.

Fortunately, Dick is the one out of the two of them who can’t handle silence. “What are you planning on doing today?”

“Well, mini you will probably insist on playing soccer with me. Do you really like soccer that much?”

A shrug. “It was the only sport the kids everywhere we went already knew how to play.”

Damian nods. “What about you?”

“I’m staying in here.”

Damian takes a deep breath. Dick notices and immediately winces, but doesn’t stop him from speaking, which is an improvement. “I’m not going to try and make you go,” he hastens to say, and watches Dick start to relax. “But… You should talk to them.” Or maybe not, a whisper of a voice says in his head. Maybe it’s too tempting. Maybe Dick will see them again, and he won’t… he’ll...

“I already got this far,” Dick says, and doesn’t mention the unspoken fact that there’s only a few hours left.

“But you want to see them.”

“This is easier.”

“Everything is easier when you ignore it.”

Dick runs a hand down his face and implores: “Why are you doing this to me?”

Damian scowls. “I’m not doing _anything_ to you,” he spits, maybe more aggressively than he means to, but he’s tired of this. He’s tired of people accusing him of ruining their lives, of ruining them, of stressing them out, of making their day that much harder just by being around.

Dick looks taken aback, his face morphing into that expression he has when he’s trying to rapidly backtrack and consult short-term hindsight. “Right, you’re right. I’m sorry.” Damian scoffs. “No, I am. This whole thing… it’s just weird, but it’s weird for you too.” He lets a pause fall, long enough to gauge whether or not Damian’s going to respond. When he doesn’t, he continues: “Why do you want me to talk to them so bad?”

Because if he doesn’t he’s a coward, Damian doesn’t say.

Because most days, there’s a small part of him that wants to curl up in bed and stay there.

Because his art means nothing on the scale of anything that amounts to skill in his life, and no matter how far he advances in lines and colors, it has no value.

Because if Dick doesn’t do this, and Damian is so much worse than him at everything, then how is Damian supposed to overcome anything?

Because adapting is a skill he hasn’t mastered, and half the time he thinks he never will.

Because if Dick is the top of the pyramid, the goal, the ideal, the thing Damian wants to be so badly, and even _he_ can’t leave his bed…

“I don’t want you to live with the regret,” Damian tells him. The words hang heavy in the air. The raw honesty itches in the palms of his hands, and he clenches his fists reflexively. Uncomfortable.

“Damian.”

He doesn’t look up.

“Damian,” Dick says again, stronger this time. He hears the blankets shuffle, and he braces himself for physical contact that doesn’t come. “Can I hug you?”

The question throws him off. He wants to say yes. “No.”

“Okay.” And he doesn’t. He just scoots beside Damian’s shoulder and sits cross legged to match, bending forward and bracing his forearms on his knees. “Can you look at me?”

He wants to say no again, but his throat proves too tight for the word to make its way out. He glances up and finds himself concentrating on his brother’s slightly crooked nose. But Dick waits until they finally meet eyes, and his are soft with an edge of determination. “It’s not your job to prevent my mistakes.”

“I’m not--”

“Let me finish. It’s not your job to take care of me. It’s not your job to worry for me or my future. It’s not your job to carry my issues around wherever you go. What I do here, today, is my own fault. I’m never going to blame you for them. I’m never going to ask why you didn’t warn me. _You_ are _never_ responsible for _me._ Understand?”

“I’m not trying to be,” responds Damian. “I’m… looking out for you. Like Maya does for me.”

“But if I don’t listen, it’s not because you didn’t try hard enough.”

When he takes a deep breath, it rattles in his chest. For a moment he thinks something’s wrong with it. “You don’t understand,” he says, and hates with a passion how he can’t find the right words. He can never find the right word. He knows every word in the dictionary and yet he can never find the one he’s always looking for. “I can’t do nothing. I can’t just… I just want to… Maybe if I just shake you or make you angry enough, you’ll… I don’t know.” He needs to stop for a second, collect himself, clench his fists until his fingers are white. Dick waits. “I know you. I can see it. You’ll go and stare at your poster and you’ll just… sit there and you won’t talk, you won’t move, and there won’t be anything I can _do_ because you just _won’t be there._ I need you to be there. I want you to… to… I want--”

Dick can’t leave. Not again. Not in body or soul or mind or spirit. If he left, if he became distanced, Damian doesn’t know what he would do. And it’s… it’s selfish. He knows it is. Distantly, like someone else is telling him -- probably Jon’s own input, if he were to hear any of this. It’s selfish because Damian doesn’t know what would happen to _himself_ if Dick were to stay here, if he were to change, or if he were to become detached in that way only grief can do.

Sometimes, it’s as if Dick is the only thing keeping him together. It’s ridiculous, because he hardly has time for Damian anymore anyway. But Dick is the one who taught Damian how to care, even if he claims that it was there all along, the ability to be a good person. There’s a part of him that doesn’t believe it. He needs his brother there to prove it to him. He needs his brother there to show him, over and over again, that he’s doing the right thing.

If he doesn’t… will Damian go back to how he was? Because sometimes it feels like he’s climbing up a mountainside without a harness, and one wrong footfall will cause him to go tumbling all the way back down.

Dick would tell him that isn’t true. That someone can’t go back to that. That Damian’s come too far.

But part of him loves to remind him: _That just means you have further left to fall._

He opens his mouth to breathe because his nose isn’t working, his vision is blurring, and suddenly something in his voice cracks in half. A record scratched. He hates it, he wants his words back, the power to speak. But he croaks instead and he leans to the side because now he can’t say _yes_ outloud, but Dick understands. Damian buries his face in the unfamiliar smell of foreign softener. “I need you to be okay,” he whispers to the shirt.

“I will be,” comes the instant response.

“Shut up,” is Damian’s immediate reply. “No you won’t.”

“But I will.” Dick wraps his arms tighter around his shoulders. The cotton of his shirt is getting more wet by the second and it sticks to Damian’s cheek. “I always am.”

* * *

  
Everything moves too fast. Practice makes perfect, and the performers in this circus have had lots of practice with preparing for a show.

Damian can’t seem to detach himself from Dickie’s side the entire afternoon. He wants to stay with Dick, but he’s too restless to remain in the trailer, so he follows his more active counterpart around running errands and duties and warm ups and last minute rehearsals instead. He can’t decide if he looks forward to or dreads seeing the rest of the Graysons, but because he’s letting Dickie dictate their activities of the day, he doesn’t have much choice in the matter.

“Hey, Ibn,” Mary says from where she’s cleaning the costume room mirrors. Whoever normally has that job is too preoccupied at the moment, and since it was bothering only her, she apparently decided to go ahead and do it herself. “How did you sleep?”

“Good,” Damian responds, despite the fact that they both know he slept on the ground in Amelia’s trailer. Dickie hops onto the counter, grabs the abandoned open lipstick he finds, and writes _Hi_ on Mary’s arm. Whatever possessed him to do that isn’t immediately obvious and Mary doesn’t seem to find it out of the ordinary.

He lingers there awkwardly for a while, giving stilted small talk and watching them laugh at some reference to a woman named Hasmik whom Damian hasn’t met. But when it’s time to go, all too soon, because the show is two hours from starting and Dickie wants to do something else before it does, he remains frozen.

“Ibn?” Mary asks kindly, looking at him through the mirror. She’s starting to apply her makeup. Right now she has dots of foundation all over her face, ready to hide the bags developing under her eyes. When Damian doesn’t answer, she twists around to look him straight on. Dickie already left, assuming Damian’s position at his heels.

“I just… wanted to let you know how grateful I am for your hospitality.”

She’s beautiful, even with her hair falling out of its hastily made bun and her skin currently warring between two different shades. Her lips are chapped and they’re starting to bleed. He didn’t notice before, never having seen her out of makeup. Her smile widens and she beckons him over. “Get over here, you,” she says, swiftly taking out her lipstick and smearing it perfectly over her lips. When he reaches her, she gently grabs his head, bends over and plants her newly made up lips right over his cheek. “I’ll have you know that’s waterproof,” she says as Damian makes a face.

“What was that for?” he protests, stopping himself from trying to wipe it off with his sleeve.

“No reason. I just like annoying adorable little boys,” she says, and laughs at the offended expression that must be on his face. She calls his (fake) name as he turns to try leaving again. “Thank you for being Dickie’s friend. He doesn’t get to spend a lot of time meeting new kids his age. If you can, I’d like to get your father’s number. Maybe next time we’re in the area you can give us a visit?”

“I’ll… ask Ron. I don’t know it by heart but… He can give it to you after the show.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you then,” she says with a glimmering smile.

Damian can’t bring himself to say it back. Instead he says, “Damian.”

She tilts her head. “What?”

“My-- It’s--” But he stops himself before he can go any further. Admitting one, letting one secret go… It might spill all the others, and right now he feels himself hanging by only a thread. “Nevermind. Later.”

He runs out before she can reply.

* * *

One hour.

People have started lining up outside the big tent. Inside, stagehands are bustling around. Performers are checking costumes and makeup. The tech crew is readjusting microphones and speakers.

Dick is standing in the empty rows of audience, looking on in horror.

“What are you doing here?” Damian says when he finds him, coincidentally right after losing Dickie. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You were the one trying to get me to go see them,” Dick points out. Damian bristles.

“Not right now!”

 _If you let me hug them one more time, I don’t think I’ll leave,_ Dick’s voice echos.

“You need to leave,” Damian continues.

“I can’t. Oh, god,” Dick says, falling into one of the seats.

Damian sits beside him. “Please,” he says, quieter. He never pleads. Dick doesn’t even notice.

_I need you to be here._

“Dick,” he says. “Get up. Dick.”

Someone is testing the lights. They’re alternating between colors, or maybe they’re just playing the programming for the show. The seats go from being overwhelmed in a rich regal purple, to sky blue reflecting off his brother’s black locks, to Damian’s hands bathed in red -- like blood.

He doesn’t know how many times he repeats Dick’s name before the man finally rises, slow like the dead, and lets Damian escort him out. But the exit least likely to have people and thus least likely to have questions asked is on the other side of the stage, and when they pass by the edge of the stage and Damian spots one of the two people he’s trying desperately to avoid, he feels his anxiety crest like an ocean wave.

“Ibn! And… Rob, right?” John Grayson says, grinning in delight, cheeks rosy from exertion. He’s about to pass on by, and Damian prays that he does quickly enough before--“Lord, are you alright?” he exclaims, stopping dead in his tracks and looking at Dick, face drawn and grin dropped.

Behind John stands Mary and Dickie, but they’re too preoccupied to see them. They’re looking at a picture that someone took on their camera, a familiar brunet man and an unfamiliar blonde woman with a small child, who can’t be much older than 4, standing behind her legs. The boy is looking at Dickie like he’s the most amazing thing he’s ever seen, and when he tries to step forward to hug the nine year old, Jack Drake swings him into his arms.

“He’s sick,” Damian says as he tries to swim through his shock, almost stumbling over his own words. “He just… he caught something bad, he--”

“He looks ready to puke. We need to get him outside,” John interjects. “Come on, son.”

Dick’s entire body stiffens. Before Damian can protest, tell him that really isn’t necessary, John has his arm on Dick’s back and is half encouraging, half pushing him to the edge of the tent. Damian doesn’t get a good look at Dick’s face, but the moment they pull back a flap at the back of the big top, Dick is on his knees and hands and dry heaving into the dirt. His hair is just long enough for John to pull back, and he keeps a broad palm on his upper back, rubbing circles.

“He sure caught a monster of a bug,” John says with a frown, glancing briefly back at Damian. “I wonder if it was from anyone around here. We should keep him separated from everyone else.”

“You might catch it,” Damian says, heart thumping in his chest. “I can take care of him, but you need to perform. Don’t you have a show next weekend?”

“I have a strong immune system,” John says, dismissing Damian’s apparent concern. “Lord, he’s pale. And green. I really hope it wasn’t something he ate…”

It only takes a few moments for them to realize that Dick isn’t so much heaving as he is hyperventilating. His breaths come in quick succession, his hands raising to cover his face, and Damian feels prickly discomfort ghost over his own skin. Dick probably doesn’t want Damian standing there. But because he can’t be sure, he doesn’t leave.

John, by now, must have realized Dick isn’t sick. He gently gets Dick into a sitting position and maneuvers him so that they’re facing each other, even though Dick refuses to uncover his face. He reminds Damian of a child.

“Rob? Rob. Look at me,” John coaxes, then frowns and turns to Damian. “Was it Rob?” But Damian is having a hard time responding, so he just nods. “Son, I need you to sit up and take some deep breaths.”

A couple seconds later finds Dick with his back straight, John’s hand guiding it into the correct angle. Damian knows for a fact that he’s well aware of how to calm his breathing and he’s already doing it, but John demonstrates anyway. They breathe together for maybe a minute before Dick finally takes his hands away from his eyes. His cheeks are wet with smeared tears. He won’t look at either of them. There’s a lurching feeling in Damian’s chest.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

They sit in silence while Dick considers how to respond. The tiny voice in Damian’s head is screaming for him to just shake his head, stand up, and leave as quickly as possible. It isn’t hard. He can do that. He can get to his feet like he always does, he can dismiss John and he can escape the situation. It’ll hardly take any effort at all.

But instead, Dick says, “I can’t.”

“Try to look at me,” John repeats gently. “Why can’t you?”

“I just…”

Dick raises his head then, and his eyes dart quickly to take everything in. He’s looking at his father like he looks at a crime scene, stunned yet unsurprised, sad and seeking to memorize every detail, even ones he won’t notice until he thinks it all over later.

He smiles a self deprecating smile. “Will you call me pathetic if I say that I miss my dad?”

“Definitely not,” is the instant reply. “And I’m going to guess that you won’t see him when you go back home?”

“No,” Dick responds, quietly.

John leans away, sitting up and brushing his hands off on his thighs. “Losing a parent… It’s not something you ever get over. I have a child of my own, and yet I think of my parents often in everything I do. Every time I look at him, I ask myself what my own father would do, and I miss him, because I know I’ll never get the chance to ask. But what’s a parent who doesn’t leave a lasting impression? Being able to live your life and think of them often, that’s how they live on. It’s okay to miss them. That’s how you know you loved them. But if whatever time they had with you could create such a love for them, could get you to live your life a good man, then it was enough.”

“It wasn’t enough time for me.”

“Is it ever?”

They sit there in silence, comforting and still. But every second that ticks by makes Damian antsy. It’s getting closer and closer to the show. Dick knows it better than any of them, because when John finally stands, he jumps to his feet as well.

“Wait,” he says, desperation thinly hid. “Thank you.”

John smiles, and Dick doesn’t have to choose whether to ask for a hug. His father gives it freely and gladly, stepping forward to embrace the man that he doesn’t think he knows. When he pulls back, he looks long and hard at his son’s face. “You know, you do look awfully familiar. A little like my own son, even.” Neither of them say anything. Dick smiles tightly. “Well, I’ve got to get going. I was just on my way to check the ropes when I ran into you guys, and it’s getting late. I’ll see you later.”

Though his breath is caught and his stomach nauseous, Damian thinks that’s it. He’s proven wrong when John has pulled back the flap and disappeared, only for Dick to suddenly race after him. “You haven’t checked the ropes yet?” he calls, body half inside the big tent, shock obvious.

Damian doesn’t hear John’s response, but whatever it is, it causes Dick to go running. He rushes to catch up. “What’s going on?” he asks as Dick stares at the stage from the front row, where his father is using the pulley to inspect the trapeze.

They’re watching, tensely wrapped in anticipation, and Damian knows this story.

It’s expected to check the safety of all the mechanics of a show before the show starts. It’s what every performer does, but especially an acrobat, who needs to depend on the reliability and safety of the ropes to keep them above their potential death. But it’s always good to double and triple check as the hours lead up to a show, and make a final look right before the lights go on, because anything can happen between the safety examination and the beginning of a performance. The longer the gap, the more possibility of something going wrong.

It’s a story Dick knows all too well.

But with the delay and detour of going outside, of giving a pep talk, it’s ten minutes before the show is set to begin. Certainly cutting it close. Which should normally be a bad thing, except…

From here, they can see the moment John’s face turns from impassive to horrified. “Mario!” he calls, and a stout man from the edge of stage, who was double checking the wiring for the speakers, rushes over. They talk low enough that neither Dick nor Damian can hear, the loud voices of the audience around them drowning everything out, but when they separate there’s a flurry of commotion. The audience is none the wiser to Mario ordering all the stage hands beside him to go out, go find a new rope, bring down the pulley, redo everything. “Get Haly down here!” he shouts to a crewmember on the ground. “We need to start the show ten minutes behind schedule!”

They both run around the circular edge of the stage to the spot closest to John, just in time to meet Mary standing on the ground, a hand over her mouth saying: “Imagine what would have happened if  you hadn’t checked?”

The elephant’s tail is heavy in Damian’s pocket.

* * *

Dick watches the entire show.

He’s hanging onto their every movement like he’s the performer and they’re the trapeze, and when the moment comes -- _that_ moment, with the finale, without the net -- he puts his head down and cries.

Damian’s never seen him cry so freely.

He’s never seen _any_ hero cry so freely.

Is that what he should be doing, too?

But he can’t bring himself to. There are tears backed up like a traffic jam behind his eyes, but they’re cars against a wall, and they can’t break through. They just get more crammed and crammed until they’re restricting his throat and his thoughts and his heart, but not his eyes. His eyes are clear.

He doesn’t know why.

Everything is overwhelming. The sounds, the smells, the lights. He wants to escape, run outside and _breathe._ But he’s convinced that if he leaves Dick’s side for even a moment, the man will just disappear.

Mary and John land gracefully on their platform, and then they’re climbing down and laughing, their son swinging between them babbling about something Damian can’t hear. The moment they shoo Dickie off to change and give each other a worried glance, Dick goes rushing off towards them like a wind up toy wound too tight. He almost barrels into them, in fact, then backtracks as fast as he can and suspends his hands in the air like he’s too afraid to touch.

“I need to tell you something,” he tells them, excitement catching his breath.

They retreat to the Grayson’s trailer, the one Damian and Dick have been occupying for the last few days.

“This is going to sound crazy,” he tells them, inviting them to sit down on their own bed. They sit slowly, and apprehension graces Mary’s face when she looks at Damian. He wonders what his face is showing. He can’t tell. “But do you believe in time travel?”

And throughout it all, the conversation and explanations and disbelief and grief and joy, Damian wants to scream. He wants to scream and cry and put a hand over Dick’s mouth just to shut him up, because this breaks every rule he knows about time travel.

But instead of doing that, he watches as the Graysons walk out of the trailer, in shock and apprehensive and not quite knowing what to do with what they just learned. But Dick isn’t distraught about it. He’s barely able to contain himself, energy thrumming through his veins like a guitar string after its just been plucked.

“Do you have any idea what this means?” Dick says, breathless, running his hands through his hair. “They’re alive and they’ll… they’ll be alive and I won’t… I’ll have my parents. Christ, Dami. _I have my parents.”_

“What about my father?” Damian blurts before he can stop himself.

But Dick only glances his way. He’s seeing something behind his eyes that Damian never will. “He’ll be fine,” he dismisses. “Great, in fact.”

Will he?

What’s Batman without Robin?

What’s Gotham without Robin?

What’s…

What’s _Damian_ without Robin?

A tiny voice in the back of his head calls him selfish.

But now that he’s started on this train of thought, it runs away from him, down a winding road with no end. What will become of his father? Without a Robin to be responsible for, to keep him check, to be his backup, to call for help -- how will his father fare when he’s all alone?

What will become of the Teen Titans? Will they ever exist? Can they? What will happen to Starfire, Beast Boy, Cyborg, or Raven without a team to call home?

What will become of Jason Todd, found on the streets without the precedent of Dick’s adoption to give him a place to live? Or Tim Drake, who will never see the Grayson’s fall, never be inspired to pick up gymnastics, never figure out the biggest secret of Gotham? What will happen to him once his parents die? Will they die at all?

What will become of Barbara Gordon, who will never inspired by the bright colors and smile of a boy who defies gravity? What will become of Cassandra Cain, alone and never found by her? Or Stephanie Brown, who might not know it’s possible for a teenager to take her fate into her own hands?

What will become of sidekicks, if Robin isn’t the first? Who will be the first? Will there be one at all, if Oliver Queen doesn’t see a boy with a bow and arrow and think that if Batman can then so can he, or if Wally West doesn’t believe the Flash can have a partner less than half his age?

What will become of all the people Dick Grayson won’t be there to save? The people any of the sidekicks won’t be there to help -- in Central City, Star City, Metropolis, Happy Harbor, Seattle, New York, Chicago, San Francisco... or the villains who won’t be impacted by them -- Crazy Quilt, Zoom, Deathstroke?

What will become of himself?

What will happen, when Bruce is presumed dead? Who will teach him? Who will reign him in? Hold him, push him, tell him to stand up tall and show him how to cry? Show him how to lead, how to be, how to hope and how to care?

What’s better? A potentially good thing a person doesn't know, or an unfortunate thing they do?

“They’ll believe me,” Dick continues, oblivious to Damian’s inner turmoil. He’s looking at himself in the mirror, grinning, probably imagining how different he looks now from when he was just a boy. “After all, people always tell me that I haven’t changed a bit.”

* * *

 

They do.

It takes until late the next day. Monday is the day for packing and rest, apparently, and they’re due to hit the road early tomorrow morning. There’s another party outside, they’re setting the bonfire up before night falls, and Dick is all too eager to go and celebrate but Damian can’t stand the thought. Dick stays to keep him company. Maybe he should have expected as much, but he’s having a hard time trusting in anything that he used to find normal. He just sits on the striped bed in their trailer and stares at the ground.

Dick has two modes when someone’s upset: Comfort them with sweet nothings and hugs, or ramble incessantly until they smile again. He’s trying the second one, and Damian wants nothing more than for him to shut up.

Luckily, there’s a rap of knuckles on the door. Unluckily, there are very few options as to who it could be. His preferred choice would, ironically, be Dickie, but he isn’t so fortunate. John Grayson stands on the other end of the door with an expression that’s looking at Dick the same way Dick was looking at him just a few hours earlier.

“I feel crazy for believing you,” he says when Dick does nothing but grin at him. “Just… just so we’re clear.”

“Crystal.” Dick’s practically vibrating in place. It’s a good thing he’s not a speedster.

John steps forward and rests his fingers over Dick’s cheekbone. They’re the same height. Damian can’t see what John is doing from where he sits, only the expression he wears on his face -- like someone managed to achieve world peace right before his eyes.

Damian looks away.

He hears the tears when they come. Neither is trying to stifle it. He can hear Mary’s whispers join them. She must have been just out of Damian’s view.

So the talking begins again, the explanations and the _long_ tale of what Dick’s life has been. His attempt to find peace instead made him prisoner. Damian gets off the bed and marches to the door, uncaring to how purposely disruptive he’s being, when Mary calls his name.

His real name.

“Damian,” she says, soft and kind, and Damian turns towards her against his wishes. He swallows. “When were you born?”

“...December 31st, 2003.”

She lights up. “Right before the New Year. That’s so special. A fresh start every year.”

He’s always thought of his birthday as the death of the year before. The day that everyone is just begging to be over, so they can finally move on and forget.

She continues: “In about two and a half years then, give or take. In… Tibet, you said?”

“If you’re thinking about being there on the day of my birth, I’m going to have to strongly advise against it,” Damian says. But Mary just laughs.

“The purpose of that trip would be tough selling to Haley, that’s for sure. When did you come to Gotham, then?”

“January 1st, 2013.” The start of a new beginning.

But a sudden realization hits him, hard in the gut like a punch, and Mary frowns because she must see it on his face.

Will the day he comes to Gotham still hold true? Nothing else will. If Dick never becomes Robin, then Drake never discovers Batman’s identity and never becomes Robin. Who will be in the Manor when Damian arrives?

Will… anyone be there?

Will his father?

If there are two and a half years between now and the day Damian’s born, that’s a year and a half between now and his conception. That leaves room for too many possibilities. Too many uncertainties.

“Ib-- Damian?” Mary asks, concern leaking into her voice.

“Nevermind,” he says. “I don’t think… I might not be there.”

That earns Dick’s attention. He turns towards him with a frown, as if he hasn’t considered the possibility. Hasn’t he? How couldn’t have he run through every potential future through his head already? “What are you talking about?”

He... hasn’t. He hasn’t given Damian a single thought.

“I…”

And suddenly, he feels grief turn to anger. The tears he has suspended behind his eyes feel like acid. “What were you expecting?” he demands. He sees the switch take Dick by surprise. His eyes widen by just the slightest margin. He rears his head back just the slightest bit. John and Mary sit stiffly. “By now, you should be in an orphanage! Right now, my father should be thinking about taking you in. Maybe he’d be already signing the papers. In a few months, you’re supposed to be dressed like a traffic light to serve as his back up so when he gets himself critically injured, he has someone to make sure he doesn’t _die._ Someone to help, or at least call for it! What do you expect will happen _now?”_

Dick sucks in a breath. “He’ll be fine,” he insists.

“How do you know?”

“He’s already been Batman for a few years. He--”

“He’s been lucky! He’s been lucky, but he’s alone, and he’s trained but he’s still inexperienced!”

“Since when did you start doubting in Batman’s abilities?”

“Since when did you _not?”_

“I’ve never--”

“Oh, shut up!”

Surprisingly, he does. Damian struggles to get his breathing back under control, but it’s not cooperating. His body isn’t listening to him, and that’s the scariest thing of all. “Are you willing to bet my existence on that assertion?”

Dick’s face is blank for the smallest second, and Damian gets the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of watching the moment that it digests his words. The way he opens his mouth before he’s even truly understood the implications, because Dick is nothing if not always hurried to give a response. Always ready with a reply, an apology, a sweet nothing that truly means _nothing._

_Selfish._

But Damian isn’t the only one.

“Don’t you understand what this _means?_ Do you understand what you’ve _done?”_

Dick angles his jaw in that way he does when he’s angry and trying not to show it. He’s never been good at masking his emotions. “I didn’t do _anything._ How do you expect me to fix this, anyway? _Kill my own parents?”_

His shout reverberates inside the trailer. It’s only when its finished its echo that the both of them realize who their company is. Neither of them dare to look at the bed.

Mary clears her throat. “I think--”

Her voice seems to snap Dick back into himself. He whirls around. “I--”

But she puts up a palm to stop him. “Your father and I should go.”

“You don’t have to,” Dick protests, but she shakes her head. As they move towards the exit, they both embrace Dick in a hug. Damian doesn’t move out of their way like he should. Instead, he stands stock still and stares at the ground until they leave. It’s why he doesn’t see it coming when Mary suddenly engulfs him in a full-bodied hug. Her flowery perfume floods all his senses for a moment that stretches into forever, and then she’s gone.

The door shuts softly behind them.

Dick punches the wall.

It isn’t with his knuckles, at least. It probably can’t be considered much of a punch. Dick just presses the palm side of his balled fist into the wall hard enough to thump it and rests his forehead on his thumb. “What the _hell,_ Damian?”

“You’re blaming me for chasing them out?”

“You’re the one who brought up the crazy idea that them being alive somehow leads to you not existing! How did you _think_ that’d make them feel?”

“I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say _you’re_ crazy, I said your idea is! Do you even hear yourself, kid? This has literally nothing to do with you, it’s just me. My life. My family. Not you! Thinking that this affects you at all is-- it’s stupid!”

_Crazy._

_Kid._

_Stupid._

“ _You’re_ stupid for being under the false assumption that our lives aren’t so interconnected that anything done to you has no impact on me, Bruce, or anyone else you _once_ considered your family too!” Damian shouts. “What, do you honestly believe you can have _both_ lives? Do you understand that this-- this place, these people, this life is replacing the one you’ve already had? That the moment we go back to _our_ time, you _won’t_ be Nightwing? You _won’t_ be my brother? You can’t have it both ways!”

“Then what should I do?” Dick demands, whirling around. “If you’re so smart, if you’ve thought of everything, then tell me what I should do!”

Damian freezes. A beat passes where Dick stands there, fists clenched and jaw locked and… he looks so angry, he looks-- sorry.

“Fuck,” he breathes, covering his eyes with his wrists. “Fuck, no. Don’t. That’s _not_ your job. I’m sorry, Dami. I’m so sorry.”

“I have to go.”

He runs out, hitting the railing outside on the attached walkway with enough force to wind him. The door swings shut behind him, but Dick doesn’t pursue.

The night is far from silent. Across the campgrounds, Damian can see the bonfire flickering like a candle in the semi-darkness -- unnecessary for how bright the moon is. Laughter drifts lazily into his ears. He tries to breathe, but his lungs won’t work correctly. They reject his attempts to control them.

Breathe.

He tries, but it doesn’t work, so he walks. He can’t breathe this fast and still stay in one place. Maybe if he walks far enough, he can convince himself it’s the exercise.

_How do you expect me to fix this, anyway? Kill my own parents?_

_If you’re so smart, if you’ve thought of everything, then tell me what I should do!_

What’s better? A potentially good thing you don’t know, or an unfortunate thing that you do?

Dick can’t do anything about it, but it’s not like...

It’s not like Damian… _hasn’t._ It’s not like _Damian_ hasn’t crossed that line _before._

It’s not even like he’s spent _most_ of his life on the ‘right’ side of it. The line… it isn’t so much a line as it is a suggestion.

He hates it.

He wants it to be a line in the same way it is for Drake. Less a line carved in the dirt so much as a brick wall erected there. No fear of crossing because there’s no possibility of scaling such a massive thing.

He wants it to be a line in the same way it is for Cain. A steel, locked gate, built and put there by his own hands. Infallible. The key tossed onto a side he’ll never reach.

He wants something permanent. He doesn’t want the uncertainty that comes with the knowledge that his line is most similar to that of a car lane. Only a suggestion put by a law that shifts depending on the place. One that can be significant, except for when a car wants to switch lanes for any reason at all.

The worst part is, no lane is different from the other. They’re all a way to travel on the same road, and sometimes he can’t quite figure out the difference between either side, and that scares him most of all. He knows the facts like he knows formulas from his calculus book, but if someone were to ask him to find those formulas for himself, his result would always be an imaginary number.

And yet, no matter how hard he wishes, he comes back to the reality that it isn’t. It never will be. He just isn’t the right kind of hero.

He comes to a stop near the animal stalls and peers into Zitka’s home, but she’s on her side, fast asleep. So are the horses save for one, a small brown mare with a white splotch between her eyes. He pets her cheek for a good while before moving on.

He comes all the way back around to the trailers and stands at Amelia’s. The door opens without his knocking.

“Oh!” Dickie says, yelping a little as he runs out and nearly crashes into Damian. “Sorry, sorry! I didn’t-- hey! You wanna come roast marshmallows with us?”

His rosy cheeks and wide grin -- even if his teeth don’t quite sparkle like they do as an adult -- are a weird contrast to how his older version looked some time before. He feels like he just stepped into another universe (he… supposes that he has, technically).

Before Damian can answer, Dickie grabs his sleeve and drags him along anyway, rambling incessantly about a redheaded girl named Raya. As he usually does, Damian starts comparing this Dick and the one he knows, but a moment later he has to stop. They’re not the same anymore. This version of Dickie became a separate Dick Grayson approximately 24 hours ago. They no longer exist within the same history.

Did they ever? After all, Damian hadn’t appeared in his brother’s childhood before.

It’s a disturbing thought.

“Actually, I can’t.”

“What?”

Damian pulls away. “I have to go,” he says, running off yet again and ignoring all of Dickie’s protests. He goes back to the trailers, and that’s when he sees it.

Sees him.

The man from days before, long enough ago it feels like it happened only in a dream with everything else that’s been on his mind.

Anthony Zucco.

He’s wearing the same suit, the same outdated hat, the same Glock poorly concealed on the small of his back. His suit jacket is too tight to hide it when it rides up -- which it does. He’s too short and big to comfortably reach beneath the steering wheel of the front car made to drive the trailer cars the way he’s doing now.

Damian opens his mouth to yell something, but he stops short.

He doesn’t know how Zucco managed to open the door, but he can’t imagine that it must have been very hard. It’s an old truck. It’s a miracle it still locks at all. Right now, the door conveniently conceals Damian’s position, so he walks quietly behind the mobster to see what he’s doing. Unfortunately, the man’s big frame blocks too much. Damian only catches that it probably has something to do with the breaks.

_Insurance is assurance! Accidents can happen at any time._

His training kicks in. It’s smooth work from there to creep over, yank the man backwards, and knock him out with a swift blow to his disoriented head.

He drops like a sack of potatoes. The gun falls out of its holster. The dirt obscures the shine of its black metal.

It’s silent.

Damian walks over and kneels, hovering his hand over its surface.

It’s… unremarkable.

He’s held many guns before. But it’s been years since then. Well, only three, but that’s 23% of his entire life, and the youngest he even remembers being is 4, which is 33%, and… he only thinks in numbers when he’s trying to distract himself.

It’s nothing. It’s just metal. Another grotesque shape that has no meaning when it’s laying by itself.

The fact that his father is so afraid of this thing, so much so he can’t even hold it, he drops it like it burns him if ever thrust into his hands, he would rather leave it laying on the ground than disarmed or taken away with him, is ridiculous.

But then again… maybe there’s a point to it all.

The metal isn’t as cold as he’s expecting it to be. It lingers with the warmth collected from Zucco’s sweaty back.

It’s only a pistol, but it’s still large and clunky in his hands. It only becomes more so when he turns Zucco over and searches for the suppressor he knows must be somewhere nearby. He attaches the piece.

The weight is awful. Not at all the smooth, beautiful balance of any one of his blades. But he’s held a gun before, and he can do it again.

How hard can it be? He’s done all of this before.

He has no choice.

He drops the gun. He looks at it laying on the ground. He’s not quite sure why he dropped it. His hands worked against his wishes and just… let go. An impulse. An instinctive response.

No, not instinctive. Letting go is probably the exact opposite of his instinctive response.

Right?

He walks over to Zucco and pushes him under the trailer, picks up the gun, and climbs into the front seat of the car. Closes the door and waits, laying the pistol gently in his lap.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

No, he knows what he’s doing. He does. He’s done it plenty of times before, he…

He hasn’t done it in awhile, but how different can it be? It’s not something that can be forgotten with time.

After a few hours, he sees Dickie’s figure off in the distance, illuminated by the bonfire that the sky is beginning to contrast against. He thinks he sees Amelia there too. So he climbs from the truck, closes the door softly again, and walks like a shadow back to the trailers. He goes behind them and slides the pistol underneath the wheels before going on the platform and walking into his and Dick’s room.

Dick is nowhere to be found. He pulls his Robin suit out from the under the bed and feels sick just looking at it.

He tries his best to ignore the symbol, the colors, the… everything, and quickly grabs the knockout gas from his utility belt. He hides the suit and runs out again like he’s being chased.

He knocks on Amelia’s door to make sure there’s no answer, then retrieves his pistol and sits beside its former hiding place, concealed by the body of the trailer.

It’s hours before he hears a sound that’s more than distant laughter, but he’s waited longer for lesser endeavors.

“He only thought to ask directions _after_ we were lost in the woods with not a person in sight,” Mary says, and Damian’s gut promptly tries to squeeze him to death.

“Well, duh. That’s the only time Sam can admit to needing help without actually having to follow through,” responds John, and they laugh.

The conversation peppers out and Damian is getting ready, he’s getting into a crouch, getting into position, when Mary stops at the foot of the catwalk stairs and says: “Where do you think Damian went?”

“I’m not sure. Dick did say he ran off, but maybe he went back inside after he left.”

“Maybe…”

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s just something about him.”

“Why are you always so vague?”

“It’s fun,” Mary teases in turn.

“Ha-ha. The boy’s a bit prickly, isn’t he?”

“Not just that. ...Hurt. He’s just a boy, but he has a lot of hurt, and kids his age… Well, I can’t imagine it’s easy making friends when all the other kids won’t understand the feelings you have for at least another twenty years -- if they ever do.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing he has Dick.”

“...Had.” There’s a weight of silence.

“No. Still has. We’ll make sure of that.”

“That would be a little weird to explain to Bruce Wayne. ‘Hi sir, I was just wondering if your 10 year old son would like to befriend my 20-something year old son?’ And I’m not sure it’ll be the same anyway. You heard Dick talk about everything they’ve been through together.”

Another stretching silence.

“Because of us,” John finally says.

“No, because of what _happened_ to us.”

“Just because it wasn’t our fault didn’t mean we weren’t the cause of everything that came after.”

“God. ...I never would have…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m so proud of him, John.”

Damian sees their feet from beneath the trailer. John’s feet move closer to his wife’s so he can embrace her in a hug. “I know. So am I.”

“Do you think he’ll be anything like he is now?”

“No. He’ll be happier.”

“You think?”

“Tragedy does more to destroy a person than happiness does. If he can be all of _this,_ a stubborn, amazing, optimistic young man, with all of _that,_ then God knows how amazing he can be if life were to just give him a break for once.”

“Well, at least, it’ll be a shame he won’t be able to teach _us_ anything on the trapeze.”

The knockout gas grenade rolls from Damian’s grip before he can second-guess himself. He’s running out of time. It gets stuck under the trailer edge, so when it explodes into the milky gas that was so carefully engineered in the Batcave, the Graysons don’t see it.

“I wouldn’t say that. Have you seen our Dickie? I mean, did _you_ master a quadruple flip before you were a teenager?”

“And if he still doesn’t get better than us in due time, I suppose we could always send him to China. Or was it Japan?”

“I’ll be sure to get the monastery’s address from Dick tomorrow… woah,” John says, leaning heavily back against the trailer.

“John?” Mary responds.

“I just got a little light headed for some reason.” John starts to cough. Mary steps forward to help him, but stumbles and catches herself on the railing. She begins coughing as well.

“Mary?”

“John!”

John Grayson _thumps_ to the ground, unconscious. Mary tries to hold her ground for slightly longer, further away from where the gas had originated than her husband, but she’s out for the count the moment she tries to check his pulse.

Damian trembles from where he stands, still concealed. His heart _thuds_ in his throat and roars in his ears. He can’t… he can’t think.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to. His body is accustomed to working on autopilot. He slides underneath the trailer and pulls the bodies under with him, working as swiftly as he can so to avoid detection. There’s no other person in sight when he finally manages to drag them all the way behind the trailer. He lays them out on their back and… stares.

He has the urge to lean forward and smell Mary’s perfume. It’s probably the creepiest urge he’s ever had, but…

One time years ago, he and Dick were at an arcade, which is where they normally go whenever Dick decides to actually let the family know he’s still alive. They were playing pinball because Dick was set in his belief that only a 90’s kid could play pinball, but little did he know Damian was well aware of that fact and had spent the last week learning to master it just for that moment.

In the end, Damian did win, although not quite fairly. He had gone first and Dick was in the middle of his turn when his wrists suddenly stilled and he turned his head around to look over his shoulder. But the crowd was so thick that although he looked for a good 30 seconds, he couldn’t figure out what he was searching for.

When Damian had asked, he had given an odd not-smile and said, “Sorry. I just thought I smelled my mom’s perfume.”

Damian had tried his hardest, but he couldn’t remember the smell of any perfume at all.

His mother never wore perfume.

But he refuses to give in to the desire, and turns the both of them on their fronts instead. He steps back and then… he steps forward again and puts them closer together so they’re touching, because…

He steps back again and looks down. He feels the gun in his grip, unsteady and… cold and… the suppressor is smooth and heavy and…

He lifts the gun.

It’s a leaden weight. He can’t breathe. It’s ridiculous, because he’s done this so many times before, it can’t _possibly_ be any different, these things don’t _change,_ he--

A gunshot, then another. The shot rings through his ears, but doesn’t quite echo. It stops before an echo -- it makes a sound but fades before it bounces back, loud but not magnified, a gunshot cut off, muted halfway through, ringing only in his ears but nowhere else. It’s louder than he remembers it being, it… feels different than he remembers it being.

It’s _never_ felt like _this_ before. He’s never felt it in his heart like a drum hit so hard that the drumstick pierces right through its membrane.

He doesn’t remember to wipe the gun before he drops it with shaky fingers. But he can’t pick it up again. _He can’t breathe._ His heart is beating faster than he can suck in a breath, _he can’t breathe-- breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t--_

His body won’t obey. It won’t obey, it won’t listen to him, it’s not under his command, he can’t control himself. He’s always in control of himself. His body is his tool, his weapon, but it’s under the control of someone else, and he can’t remember the last time--

No, he can. He can remember--

_Fire. In the corner of his eye, burning his peripheral. Fire on the arm of himself, but grown up, standing tall, and plunging a cold steel blade through his chest. Every bit of skin splitting -- he could feel it, feel it force its way in like he was nothing more durable than tissue paper. He could feel the edge of the blade on his fingertips, sliding through his gloves and biting at him in some mocking imitation of the way it bit at his heart. He couldn’t stay awake. His body was shutting down against his will, against his control, going under, spilling out and away from him and no amount of wishing would stitch his insides back together again._

But it hasn’t betrayed him since.

He stumbles away, his legs shaky, refusing to obey him. He can hardly stand but he needs to get away, and he makes it all the way to the cluster of trees at the nearest edge of the campgrounds, although he nearly runs into the ground a few times and he does fall a few times but his body is getting there on autopilot and it doesn’t understand that he can’t, he can’t, he--

He keels over and vomits.

But all that comes out is a thin yellow dribble of bile that burns his throat. He hasn’t eaten anything for… most of the day, for… he can’t remember. His stomach clenches in protest, stabbing pains like he’s starved himself for weeks, convulsing even though nothing is coming out, with so much force that he feels like he may start puking up blood--

But he doesn’t. He won’t. It stops. It stops and he collapses, sucking in breaths like a man drowning but he can’t, all he can get into him are the shallowest of-- why can’t he--

The ringing in his ears is still there but the gun is so far away, there’s no possibility that the sound of the gunshot has reached this far or that it’s still trapped in the air, the waves of sound held there by some unseen force. He’s so far away from the sky, and the gun, and the… bodies. From the bodies. A million miles away, in fact. He feels like the space between them is stretching, morphing… Time is slowing down.

Or maybe it’s going too fast.

He can’t-- why can’t he--

He’s so hot.

He wants his shirt off, and he can feel the old rain from the grass, hidden in the mud, seeping into his knees, and he can feel cold sweat down his back and in his armpits, but he’s burning up. The bonfire lights in the distance are blurry and piercing at his eyes but the darkness is even more formidable, and all the sights are mixing together, he can only see individual blades of grass but not the whole picture, he knows there are bushes beside him but he can’t see them he can only focus on this-- one--

Why can’t he _breathe._

_I think this deserves ice cream._

_Maybe next time we’re in the area you can give us a visit?_

_Do you like ice cream?_

His chest hurts. It’s the lack of breath, or maybe the attempt to get breath, or maybe-- he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know why any of this is happening or why the world is tilting sideways, everything is turning upside down, he’s laying on the ground now and the mud on his cheek is _so cold--_

_Thank you for being Dickie’s friend. He doesn’t get to spend a lot of time meeting new kids his age._

_He’s just a boy, but he has a lot of hurt._

_Well, it’ll be worth it once you see these two in the air._

A pounding is in his head now, not just his heart. He’s spinning but he knows he’s lying still. He’s spinning and there’s a weight on the side of his head, forcing his face to the ground.

_I feel crazy for believing you._

_Oh, I don’t know. There’s just something about him._

He’s so _cold--_ he can’t _think._

He can’t _breathe._

He--

 

* * *

The first thing Damian notices when he wakes up is the sound of a humidifier. It hums while he’s in that floaty state between awake and asleep. The moment it finally clicks what it is his eyes shoot open, he pushes himself up--

And he groans at the lightheadedness that immediately follows.

“Ow-- fuck. What did I drink last night?” Dick’s voice says, and Damian looks over to see his face pressed into a sterile white pillow. He’s on a pastel-blue cot of sorts, with shiny steel legs pressed against an unblemished white wall. There’s a navy blue blanket tucked up to his ears.

They’re in the Batcave.

The medbay, to be specific. It’s the only room in the Batcave with man-erected plaster walls. Pennyworth wouldn’t settle for anything less sanitary. For a moment, Damian’s so overcome with the foreign feeling of being home that he forgets why he was passed out in the first place.

He wants to tell Dick to shut up, but he wants to get away more. He barely makes it to the door.

“Oh, Master Damian, you’re awake,” Pennyworth says, opening the door with his hip the moment Damian reaches for the handle. He can hear Dick behind him start to sit up and his heart rate ratchets up in immediate response. He wants to slap his chest and tell it to get a grip, but that would look ridiculous. “I think you’ve just gotten more rest than you normally receive in an entire week.”

“Alfred?” Dick says, alert and incredulous, the former grogginess of his voice gone. Pennyworth raises a single eyebrow.

“I apologize if my appearance is a disappointment to you.”

There’s a pause. Damian doesn’t dare turn around, but Pennyworth is still blocking the door. He would shove past him, but that would create more drama than necessary and cause someone to go looking for him in order to deliver a lecture. He’s been civil towards Pennyworth for years now. For that to suddenly change would be suspicious.

He can’t be suspicious. He can’t draw attention. He needs to just… slip away. Quickly.

“No, no. That’s… that’s not it,” Dick says, quieter now. “I’m always happy to see you. You know I am.”

“It seems as though you’re speaking to convince yourself.”

Pennyworth has questions, no doubt. But he won’t ask them until they’re well-fed and rested. That’s his policy. It’s a policy that leaves Damian room to escape before the interrogation.

“I just don’t know why I’m in the Batcave.”

“You and Master Damian materialized out-cold in the alley of your disappearance. Master Bruce had installed his own set of cameras there to watch for any… unique occurrences. It was quick to let us know that two boys had suddenly appeared out of thin air.”

“That doesn’t…”

Pennyworth finally steps away from the door, and Damian slides strategically behind him to catch it before it can shut and draw a noise.

Of course, tricks like that have never worked on the weathered butler. “Master Damian, don’t think you can leave without first getting something to eat.”

“I will upstairs.”

The cave has always been chilly, even with all the heaters they install. The draft from the waterfall at the outside entrance sweeps up his arms, sending chills down his spine. He’s wearing the generic set of soft white sweatpants and matching t-shirt that all patients in the medbay receive. The outfit has never done anything to protect against the chill of the cave, and that doesn’t change now.

“Damian,” his father says, loud enough to be assertive and just quiet enough to prevent an echo. The man himself is standing in front of his massive computer, still half in his Batman uniform with the cowl laying beside the keyboard. It’s a request for Damian to see him, but he doesn’t want to. He walks quicker to the exit into the manor.

It’s suspicious, but drastic times call for drastic measures.

Normally, the steel door concealing the elevator opens when he’s around five feet away. This time, however, he gets to it and the usual green button at the top turns red with an audible click. The doors don’t open. He balls his fist and tries to control his heart.

“That wasn’t a request,” his father says, still standing calmly in the same spot while Damian feels as if there’s a tsunami ready to drown him at any moment. “I need both of your sides of what happened. One moment you’re here, the next you’re gone, and three hours later you reappear in different clothes. Mind explaining that?”

“Yes,” Damian snaps. “I do mind.”

“Bruce?” Dick says, walking out from the medbay doors nestled in an unobtrusive alcove of the natural cave walls. His entrance successful derails whatever lecture Bruce was about to deliver. “What’s going on?”

“I was about to ask you that,” Bruce says, stiff and professional. Neither of them spare Damian a glance, but with no way to leave he’s trapped anyway. He leans his back heavily against the stone beside the elevator and concentrates on the feeling of the cold seeping into his shoulders. As much as he doesn’t want it to be, his eyes keep getting drawn back to his brother and the inevitable reality about to crash down upon him.

“Why am I still here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I shouldn’t…,” Dick peters off, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand. He gives a nervous laugh. “Bruce, my _parents._ They’re _alive.”_

Silence.

“Dick…,” Bruce says, and Damian has never heard his father this way. Heavy. He leans against the desk and grips the edges with both hands. “Your parents are dead. They have been for the last 16 years.” Confusion coats his tone. “Why would you…?”

But Dick is already shaking his head. “No, no they _were._ They were dead, but… I changed that. We…”

They stare at each other.

“They didn’t fall,” Dick says with conviction, starting over. He straightens his posture with confidence. “I was there, Bruce. I saw them land with my own two eyes. They didn’t fall.”

_Buh-dum… buh-dum… b-dum, b-dm, b-dmbdmbdmbdm--_

“You’re right.”

Dick nods. “Yeah, I--"

“They were shot.”

Damian slides to the ground.

“What?” Dick’s confidence evaporates like the mist. His voice is shaky. Faded.

“June 27th, 2001. Your parents, Mary and John Grayson, part of the Flying Grayson act at Haly’s Circus, were walking to their trailer on a Monday night when they were ambushed by Anthony Zucco, a former protection money collector for the mafia. He shot them after Jack Haly, the owner of the circus, refused to pay--”

“No!” Dick shouts, digging his fingers into his hair. “That’s not-- Bruce, no, I was _there.”_

“You were at the--”

“Just now! I was just there! That thing, that-- whatever it was, gun or something, took Dami and I back in time. I was… oh god.” The quiet that follows Dick’s explosion falls in, desperate to fill the gap as his words abruptly stop. He continues softly: “I _wasn’t_ there. They walked alone. They-- no. No. Oh no. Bruce, I should have… No…”

When Dick finally chokes up and Damian can look no longer, something snaps. A guitar string finally tuned too tight. One moment his vision is clear, the next he can hardly see the ground for how heavily it becomes obscured, tears falling down faster than he can catch them. They soak the collar of his shirt, drip into his mouth, and he can taste nothing but salt and hear nothing but someone crying, but he doesn’t even know which of them it is.

He hears something strange to him at first -- an audible click. Then there’s a hand on his shoulder and he has only the presence of mind to hide his face.

But whoever it is isn’t looking for his face. They want him on his feet, and despite the churning of his stomach and how he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to move from his knee-hugging position, they insist.

“Oh, child,” Pennyworth’s soft accent says, and for once Damian feels relief like nothing else at the sound.

He was afraid it was Dick.

Guilt festers like a monster, is the first thought Damian has when he manages to take his first few steps. It festers and weighs like an anvil in his gut, dragging him down, back down to the ground. It begs him to press his fists hard into his gut and apply pressure to the wound it creates.

This isn’t the first time they’ve met.

But before, it was a subconscious disease. It seeped into his bones, sapped at his strength. It woke him in the night with images of the dead seared into the back of his eyes.

The feeling was familiar, but the people weren’t. The images were of bodies, not faces. The people were caricatures, not characters. The ones left behind were unknown to him.

Except for Maya. But even then… the face covered by a white mask with too many eyes… And she forgave him, and the details of the memory had already been banished from his mind in a plea for protection of it.

Sometimes, the guilt drove him crazy. It made him take lost things to far off places. It made him save people who hated him. It made him hate people who loved him -- or else insisted that they did.

And yet… He’s always had too much.

_We’re supposed to feel bad about stuff. It’s what makes us better._

What would Dick say, if he knew that Damian never changed?

They stand in the elevator, only centimeters from touching. This is perhaps the closest Damian has ever allowed Pennyworth to remain in his presence, but he doesn’t particularly care at the moment. Pennyworth’s proximity forces Damian to remember that he can’t allow himself to drown in his own tears.

He takes a moment to try rubbing his hands, which are covered in tears, dry against his shirt. But when he does, he sees red on them, and has a heart stopping moment when he thinks it’s blood.

It takes him a few seconds of shell-shocked horror to remember that blood doesn’t stay red after it dries. He rubs his thumb against the faint mark on his palm. It smears.

Lipstick. From his cheek. From when she kissed him one last time on her way to the bonfire Monday night.

With a quick, rasping breath that scrapes against his throat, he starts desperately scrubbing at his cheek. Pennyworth’s eyes widen and he grabs at Damian’s wrist to still it. “Master Damian! What in heavens are you doing?”

“Is it gone?” he demands.

“Is what gone?” Pennyworth replies.

The butler is nothing but meticulous. He wouldn’t miss such a detail like the lingering lipstick of a corpse. Damian allows his wrist to remain suspended in the air as he struggles to take in deep, but silent, breaths. He fails. After about thirty seconds, he yanks his wrist away.

It takes until the doors open again into the manor library for Damian to say: “Have I gotten better?”

Pennyworth opens his mouth, looks fully into Damian’s face, and shuts it again. There’s a moment where they stand outside of the elevator, suspended in the dim light of a single lamp that he must have turned on before entering the cave.

“In every way,” Pennyworth says.

But Damian is quick to shake his head. “Then you know nothing at all.”

He moves to leave. By the time he gets to the front of the library, Pennyworth is still standing in the same spot. “Would the Damian Wayne of three years ago have cried?” he asks.

“Remorse means nothing if you don’t react to it,” Damian responds. “If you don’t make up for your sins, it doesn’t matter how much you ask for them to be forgiven. To have a sin forgiven and then to sin again is still to never be without sin.”

“You’re wrong in one thing, young sir,” the butler says, joining him at the entrance. “And it’s that remorse in of itself is a reaction that many people don’t have. Including you of three years ago, if memory serves me well.”

But Damian has never been able to think in terms of inaction. Remorse is inactivity. It’s a state of emotion that serves no purpose and can do nothing on its own. Therefore, it’s as good as useless. But he doesn’t bother telling Pennyworth this. Instead, he escapes. It’s all his guilt will allow him to do.

When he gets to his room and shucks off his --  _Dickie's_ pants, a knot of elephant tail falls out of the pocket and innocuously onto the ground.

He hardly looks at it before he tosses it out the window.

* * *

 

August humidity finds Damian kneeling in the dirt. He has a trowel in one hand, and as the sun sets behind him he gets to work digging up the stiff soil of the abandoned campgrounds in front of the rundown Amusement Mile. It’s the same spot he first saw Dickie, months ago (or, in a sense, over 16 years ago), patting the dry dirt over a hole he’d created.

Well, at least, he thinks it’s the same spot. The many spots of loose soil around him are a testament to how badly he keeps miscalculating that.

He digs two feet and then acknowledges defeat. It’s not here either.

Damian sits in a cross legged position, looks out over the clearing, and breathes. In… out… slow and calm -- the rhythm of meditation.

“You look lonely,” a familiar voice says, and Damian does his best not to tense. He heard someone approach minutes ago, and the fact that nothing was said until now alone confirmed that they weren’t strangers.

“When someone goes out of their way to find the most deserted spot in one of the largest cities in the country, they aren’t inviting company, _Dick,”_ Damian says.

“Really? I’ve made it a personal philosophy to always talk to the loneliest looking person in the room, and considering you’re the _only_ person in the metaphorical ‘room’...,” Dick replies, coming to a stop in front of him. Damian opens his eyes and looks up to see him squinting at the sun’s intrusive rays. Like an idiot, though, he doesn’t move so the sun is behind him and just shields his brow.

“How did you find me?”

“You realize B has a GPS tracker in your bike, right? He asked me to hunt you down. Surprise, surprise -- you _can’t_ take the R-Cycle out while you’re in civilian clothes. Who woulda thought?”

The bike in discussion is sitting 20 feet away, its metal cooling with the coming dusk. “It’s my bike,” Damian says.

“It’s your bike that your dad bought and paid for,” responds Dick immediately. “Trust me, I tried the same argument, and my bike wasn’t anywhere near as fancy. It won’t work so cut your losses now.”

It’s been months. They haven’t spoken about the circus since the day they arrived back in 2016, and even then they didn’t talk to each other. After Damian had retreated to his room, Dick had attempted to find him to say his goodbyes. But the moment the man had sought him out, Damian had sought the roof. Dick hadn’t been in the state of mind to hunt him down and went back to Bludhaven. Damian hasn’t paid attention to what he’s done since.

It’s weird, being with him now. Maybe months have passed but the wound is as fresh as it ever was, and being in this space with his brother is like walking on gravestones.

“It’s beautiful,” Dick says. Damian twists to look at the sunset, shining a copper tint over the Gotham River. It’s not beautiful. Frankly, it’s hideous. The sun is obscured by so much smog that Damian can’t even pinpoint where it is. The entire sky is instead cast into a pale, bloody haze, made murky by brown pollution like a canvas painted with dirty brushes.

Damian doesn’t answer. He stands, brushes off his thighs, and moves towards his bike. “Wait,” Dick calls. “You don’t need to leave yet.”

“Why would I stay in a deserted clearing?” Damian says. “You’re the only one who thinks it’s worth looking at.”

“And yet you’re the one who was sitting here. What were you doing, anyway? Starting a gardening club, but you’re the only member?”

“None of your business.”

“This place looks like the weekend before Groundhogs Day,” Dick continues, always persistent. Damian kicks the stand on his bike. “Seriously, Dami. You’re killing me here.”

He cringes. Then, before he can convince himself otherwise, he sets the stand for his bike back up and stares at the seat to say, “You buried something here.”

“Huh,” is Dick’s only response.

Damian turns to scowl at him. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, what did you bury?”

Dick smirks. He’s not even trying to hide it. “How long have you been here, little D?”

“Don’t avoid the question.”

“You didn’t want to just _ask_ me _that bad--”_

“Because I knew you would only--”

“--your pride is _insane--”_

“My pride? Your--”

“--just like Bruce--”

“Grayson!” Damian snaps.

Dick starts laughing. Damian crosses his arms and waits for him to be done. “Trust me, I’d tell you if I knew, but I honestly can’t remember.”

With a cry of frustration, Damian promptly turns around to get back on his bike, but is once again interrupted by: “ _But,_ I know how to find it!”

He looks at his older brother suspiciously, but the man just turns in a circle and looks around at all the different holes Damian has attempted to cover up. “You’re sure it’s right around here?” Damian doesn’t grace him with an answer. “Right.” Dick squints to a spot in the near distance, towards the city, and walks in that direction. When Damian catches up, he points to a much deeper hole, the obvious remains of an erected fence post. “Thing is, I always picked my spot the same way. I’d go to any old fencepost and then, moving perpendicular to it, I’d find the tallest building I can see in the city and walk far enough away so that the building is just barely perfectly covered by my thumb.”

Dick finds the direction the fence must have once gone and Damian obeys the steps, his hand held a foot away from the front of his face, scowling all the while. “This is unnecessarily complicated,” he insists.

He ends up at a spot only a foot away from the last hole he dug. Dick sits cross-legged on the ground and gestures for Damian to do the honors. “You did this for every place you visited?” Damian asks.

“Yup. I liked digging it back up the next time we visited. It was usually some trinket we bought at our last stop, so coming back and finding it was like a welcome back gift.”

They sit in silence, waiting for the moment of discovery. Damian is almost about to give up, certain of the inaccuracy of Dick’s calculations on the location of the object. But sure enough, when he’s dug only a foot into the ground, the trowel hits something.

It’s a shoe box. The trowel hits the very corner of it, so evidently Dick’s prediction _was_ slightly off, and it takes a minute for Damian to dig around it. The shoebox is old and squished, but surprisingly safe from the elements due to the excessively thick layer of saran wrap wound around it numerous times. It’s a struggle to unwrap it, and in the end Damian has to uncover the knife hidden in his boot to get the job done.

He slowly opens it.

The first object to catch his attention is a small elephant. A plushie, Stephanie once called it. It looks like something he might find in one of the claw machines at an arcade. The synthetic fibers are worn and faded, and they were shedding slightly before being put into the box because fibers sit on top of the rest of its fur, but it’s still remarkably soft to the touch. He squeezes the torso and feels the indentation of his finger through the other side.

“Zitka…,” Dick says, under his breath. He stares at it. Damian hands it to him and Dick takes it gingerly, as if it’s a prized possession. It makes him almost feel bad about squeezing it. While Dick stares at his childhood plushie, Damian looks back into the box.

There’s only one other object in there. A children’s book just big enough to not sit perfectly horizontal inside.

On the cover poses a white man with a red hat and feather. He’s wearing green, a color that blends into the forest backdrop, but with the green clashes his red tights, red undershirt, and what looks to be a red cape. He has silver bracelets and a bow and arrow clasped in his hands. “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle,” he reads aloud.

Dick laughs. It’s a wet laugh. His eyes and nose are red, but he isn’t crying. “That’s my favorite book,” he says.

“I guessed,” Damian says, raising an eyebrow. “You and Harper must have bonded over your mutual inspirations.”

Dick sniffs and wipes a hand under his nose even as he grins. “Too obvious?”

“Well, it isn’t Queen and Harper obvious, if that’s what you mean. But then again, they didn’t name themselves after him.”

“The name wasn’t only because of Robin Hood,” Dick insists. “It was more of a convenient reminder.”

“I know.”

They sit in a companionable silence. After a moment, Dick quietly says: “Yeah, I guess you do. You can, uh. Keep it. I don’t need it anymore. I’m not sure what I’d do with it anyway. Same with Zitka. She’d probably be safer at the manor with how much I keep moving around lately.”

Damian nods and takes Zitka gently from Dick’s hands, gingerly placing her back in the box. But now he’s no longer distracted from his own thoughts. He looks down at the cover of the book. He opens it, flips through the pages, glances over the drawings with an incurious eye. The pages are yellowed with age, the painting faded.

“I miss them,” Dick says.

The nausea begins churning immediately. It was already there, biding its time. Now it threatens to overwhelm him.

“God, I’m a terrible son,” he continues, and puts his face in his hands.

“It’s not your fault they died,” Damian chokes out, too aggressively. But Dick is used to him being aggressive.

“No, it’s not. But… I should be more sad.”

Damian’s hands on the book freeze. “What?” he demands.

When Dick’s head come back up, he’s not crying. “I’m _relieved._ My parents died and I’m _relieved.”_

There’s a shell-shocked pause.

“You didn’t look relieved a month ago.”

“They still died, Dami. I… I was expecting them to be here smiling and they weren’t, but…” He takes a deep breath to steady himself. “I like my life the way it is. Even with all the death. Even with all the… everything. I love my friends, I love my family, I love _you._ You were right, little D. We wouldn’t have met. I wouldn’t have had my annoying little brother to beat at arcade games. You might not have even… And I want my parents so badly. But when it comes down to it…

“When it comes down to it, I’m not Batman. Bruce, he would give it all up in a heartbeat if he could have his parents back. He would hand over the world for them. But not me. I can’t. They just... aren’t my world anymore.”

Damian puts the book down so Dick doesn’t see how badly his hands are shaking. He tries sitting on them. “You already lost them.”

“I already lost them,” Dick agrees. “And maybe that makes Bruce a better son than I ever was, but… I know how to move on. And I did. I survived and then I lived. I miss them so much, Dami. But getting them, and losing you, and Bruce, and Tim, and Jason, and Wally, and _everyone…_ I would be losing my world all over again. It isn’t worth it.” Dick grimaces at his own words, his Adam’s apple bobbing as if he swallowed something he didn’t chew well enough. “And I’m relieved. That’s terrible, isn’t it?”

“I’m not the one to ask."

They sit as the dusk finally falls to black.

Gotham’s August has always been heavy. The heat sits on the ground now like the weight of the sky is forcing it to become a simmering blanket. Damian can feel perspiration roll from his neck down his spine and he concentrates on that sensation, willing that and the empty sound of the night to calm him. All of this… it’s become too much to process at once. He has to wait until he’s somewhere where Dick isn’t watching. But for now, he reminds himself that there’s no rush. They have nowhere to be. And, besides. He’s sick of running.

He misses his brother.

Dick started by watching the sky, but he’s never been much for sitting still. After a while, he begins to trace patterns and shapes in the dirt. The hard edges of a triangle form into Haly’s Circus’ big top when Damian finally finds his voice. “You likely don’t remember this, but there was a night when you and I fell asleep on the trailer floor. Before we went to sleep, you told me that we need to feel guilty of our wrongdoings because it’s what makes us better,” he ventures, testing the sound of his words against the air.

Dick nods. “Guilt changes us more than anything.”

“But what if I never changed?” Damian continues. And just like that, the sentences tumble from his mouth. Now that he’s begun, he can’t seem to stop himself. “What if I never got better? What if I kept killing, like my mother taught me? What if I betrayed you? What if… if I--”

But Dick only smiles and shakes his head, interrupting him. He reaches a hand out to ruffle Damian’s hair. “Don’t be stupid,” he responds as easily as if he’s claiming that water is wet. “You’d never do anything like that.”

* * *

 

 

> _**To get a dream of life again** _
> 
> _**A little of vision of the start and the end** _
> 
> _**But all the choirs in my head sang no** _

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sorry.
> 
> A few things! One: Damian doesn't have a canonically specific birthday, so I picked a day that was most symbolic. He's not religious so I just took the Christian calendar of the New Year because he lives in the West and that's what everyone here follows.
> 
> As for the song they sang at the bonfire, that song took me forever to find. It exists in maybe two videos on Youtube and we sing it at literally every gathering ever. It's a very easy and catchy song to dance to.
> 
> Be sure to let me know your thoughts and feelings! Thank you for reading!


End file.
